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Reviews tagging 'Slavery'
Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family by Rachel Jamison Webster
1 review
skeltzer's review
informative
fast-paced
1.0
What did I just read? I went into this expecting a story about Benjamin Banneker, but it felt like the bulk of this story was about white women. In one exchange, the author mentions that she'll write a paragraph, or maybe a page, about white women. I laughed at that part because half the book had been about white women, and she wrote about white women as if she were not one herself, in a group apart.
It should have been called "Benjamin Banneker and Me." I can understand why one of the family members was upset about the author and this book.
Along with this centering of white women, I didn't realize that much of the book would be a creative writing exercise about how the ancestors may have felt or what they may have experienced. It felt like a gross fantasy. I found myself checking the notes section for each chapter to figure out what exactly was true and what wasn't.
I'm not entirely convinced that the story told in this book was fully the author's story to tell. What would have been a really interesting story to tell more of was what happened with the ancestor that passed into whiteness. That was more the author's story to tell and to reckon with, in my opinion.
It should have been called "Benjamin Banneker and Me." I can understand why one of the family members was upset about the author and this book.
Along with this centering of white women, I didn't realize that much of the book would be a creative writing exercise about how the ancestors may have felt or what they may have experienced. It felt like a gross fantasy. I found myself checking the notes section for each chapter to figure out what exactly was true and what wasn't.
I'm not entirely convinced that the story told in this book was fully the author's story to tell. What would have been a really interesting story to tell more of was what happened with the ancestor that passed into whiteness. That was more the author's story to tell and to reckon with, in my opinion.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery and Racism
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