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4.16 AVERAGE
4.16 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A very important, complex and at times heartbreaking memoir by a Black adult adoptee in a transracial adoption. Highly recommend.
This book means a lot to me. I saw a lot of myself in Rebecca’s pages. Definitely one that will now live with me.
Great memoir! The protagonist/author has a lot in common with my older (half) sister, which I think is really important representation. It takes you on a journey of the time during her childhood, weaving in the elements of popular culture and political realities. She raises social issues as she has experienced them - adoption, interracial family, identity, race, abortion, relationships, political resistance, and so on.
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Thank you #NetGalley, Rebecca Carroll and Simon and Schuster Canada for the ARC copy of Surviving the White Gaze. I was thrilled to be able to read this powerful memoir as my first February 2021 read for Black History Month.
I haven't read many memoirs in my life so I don't have much to compare Carrolls work to, but she wrote a very powerful memoir sharing her very emotional harrowing story. Rebecca shares her earliest memories of the first time she met another black person, and growing up extremely isolated as the only black women in her town. She also shares her experiences with her birth parents and being adopted and I think that a lot of people would find those experiences relatable. Her childhood was filled with abuse, neglect and isolation and it was very eye opening some of the experiences Rebecca shared.
I can only imagine how tough this memoir was to write and share, and want to thank Rebecca for putting her story and experiences down on paper so that others like me can read, and understand just a little bit more about your life and your perspective.
Surviving the White Gaze was well written and an incredibly powerful read but I want to warn that it may be triggering for people (abuse, neglect, etc.). I would really like to read other work by Rebecca Carroll as she is obviously a good writer and has lived an incredible life and I will be checking out her podcast. I’d recommend it for fans of memoirs and anyone looking to read something outside of their usual lane by an BIPOC author as the content is really important.
Trigger warnings: abuse, adoption, neglect, rape.
I haven't read many memoirs in my life so I don't have much to compare Carrolls work to, but she wrote a very powerful memoir sharing her very emotional harrowing story. Rebecca shares her earliest memories of the first time she met another black person, and growing up extremely isolated as the only black women in her town. She also shares her experiences with her birth parents and being adopted and I think that a lot of people would find those experiences relatable. Her childhood was filled with abuse, neglect and isolation and it was very eye opening some of the experiences Rebecca shared.
I can only imagine how tough this memoir was to write and share, and want to thank Rebecca for putting her story and experiences down on paper so that others like me can read, and understand just a little bit more about your life and your perspective.
Surviving the White Gaze was well written and an incredibly powerful read but I want to warn that it may be triggering for people (abuse, neglect, etc.). I would really like to read other work by Rebecca Carroll as she is obviously a good writer and has lived an incredible life and I will be checking out her podcast. I’d recommend it for fans of memoirs and anyone looking to read something outside of their usual lane by an BIPOC author as the content is really important.
Trigger warnings: abuse, adoption, neglect, rape.
A powerful, heart wrenching, coming of age memoir about race and identity and the challenges of being biracial as one of the only Black people in a rural New Hampshire town. Adopted by white hippie parents, Rebecca Carroll was born to a white mother and a Black father (who was unknown for most of her life). She grows up “being ushered through [her] life via the powerful passport of white privilege,” with little connection to her Black culture. She does connect with her birth mother in her teens but their relationship is incredibly toxic and damaging. The real takeaway I felt for this memoir was how damaging the notion of color blindness is: “It wasn’t just that my siblings and parents didn’t see me. It was that they didn’t see race or think about Blackness - mine or anyone else’s - and I felt like I deserved that at the very least. To be adopted into a white family that did not see or care or think about my Blackness or my experience navigating a racist country had always felt lonely and isolating, endlessly confusing but now it just felt cruel.” It takes her going to college and finding a Black professor as a mentor and making Black friends to really start to develop a sense of belonging. I honestly couldn’t get over how toxic and damaging her relationship with her birth mother was. The dysfunctional family dynamics were reminiscent of Educated or North of normal, with the extra layer of race added to the mix. This should be required reading and will be a needed eye-opening for many about the power of micro-aggressions and the harmful consequences of unintentional (and intentional) racism.
I think this book is a lot of things:
1. It is deeply sad, the description of her early years often left me speechless and hurting for her younger self.
2. It is clearly a creative book (I’ve seen reviews of it saying that she fills in the gaps and they gave it less stars bc of that, I think that’s dumb all memoirs do that)
3. It is beautifully written and very accessible meaning that I think it talks about feminist theory applicable to everyday life in a way that makes the concepts so easily understood that I think it would be a great place to start a feminist or antiracist journey.
4. I think it also is deeply important as cross racial and cross cultural adoptions are so common now, but I’m not sure as a country or as a system we have ever held up a lens to the possibility that maybe this isn’t what is the absolute best for these children, or at least not the way we are doing it even though black cross racial adoptees have been speaking out about this far longer than we have been listening.
Overall just a good well written amazing memoire.
1. It is deeply sad, the description of her early years often left me speechless and hurting for her younger self.
2. It is clearly a creative book (I’ve seen reviews of it saying that she fills in the gaps and they gave it less stars bc of that, I think that’s dumb all memoirs do that)
3. It is beautifully written and very accessible meaning that I think it talks about feminist theory applicable to everyday life in a way that makes the concepts so easily understood that I think it would be a great place to start a feminist or antiracist journey.
4. I think it also is deeply important as cross racial and cross cultural adoptions are so common now, but I’m not sure as a country or as a system we have ever held up a lens to the possibility that maybe this isn’t what is the absolute best for these children, or at least not the way we are doing it even though black cross racial adoptees have been speaking out about this far longer than we have been listening.
Overall just a good well written amazing memoire.
slow-paced
I really struggle to review memoirs that I don't enjoy and that are about experiences so incredibly different than my own. I admire Carroll and appreciate her ability to share her story and difficult family history; I recognize that she doesn't owe us her pain or healing. However, the writing style and structure was not really for me. At times it seems that she had this profound ability to process racism and trauma at a very young age while still going through it and other times it felt like she was just sharing things that happened to her without reflection or narrative purpose.