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candournat's review against another edition
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Such an interesting structure & form!
scribepub's review
Powerful and provocative.
Sunday Life
Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.
Shu-Ling Chua, The Saturday Paper
Sunday Life
Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.
Shu-Ling Chua, The Saturday Paper
scribepub's review against another edition
Powerful and provocative.
Sunday Life
Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.
Shu-Ling Chua, The Saturday Paper
Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.
2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation
Beautifully written and courageously told.
2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation
Sunday Life
Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.
Shu-Ling Chua, The Saturday Paper
Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.
2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation
Beautifully written and courageously told.
2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation
karabk's review against another edition
5.0
Tessa McWatt does a deep dive into her multi-racial identity in her memoir Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging. She shares her encounters and experiences of growing up questioning her identity and colour through body part chapter titles like Lips, Nose, Hair, and Ass. What box do you tick when you have Chinese, Scottish, Portuguese, Indian, African and French ancestry? I get it. Having a mixed racial background, and been asked “What are you?” throughout my life, I can relate. I also struggle with enjoying the dance-able Trinidad
careinthelibrary's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars
Shame on Me is a poetic exploration into selfhood, mixed-race identity, and belonging. From a young age, McWatt is asked “What are you?” as if she is a science experiment of mixed chemicals instead of a blend of histories and ancestors. She spits in a tube to find out the genetic make up of her background though her family stories alone tell her that she has blood relatives of Chinese, Indian, South American Indigenous, Portuguese, French Jewish, African, and Scottish heritage.
This spare memoir is split into chapters that dissect human features that have been racialised over the centuries. Her eyes tell stories of her Chinese relative who spent her life running. She speaks to the history of racializing people based on hair, skin, blood, etc. as she struggles to find a place where she truly fits, truly belongs though she does not fit neatly into any of the boxes society has created for race.
Internalized racism runs deep in her family and she struggles to claim every part of her equally. To not value some of her ancestry over others. She sees her family's history in the shape of her lips, the texture of her hair, the childhood photos that she pores over trying to see the humanity in the faces of patriarchs and matriarchs. She seeks connection to the past to help her understand herself.
For those interested in memoirs, critical race theory, mixed-race studies, the history of race and colonization throughout the world, you will love Shame on Me. Some of my favourite quotes below, but this is only a small sampling. My copy is full of flags and underlinings; it was a delight to read her words. She expressed sophisticated ideas through the spare, beautiful, profound language. I'm going to share a few of the MANY passages I underlined. This book is moving in every sense.
"It's my African ancestor...on whom I focus my imagination....hers is a story that has been buried deepest, most painfully ignored. Hers is the story that bears such deep shame that it has been erased. But the body is a site of memory. If race is made by erecting borders, my body is a crossing, a hybrid many times over. My black and white and brown and yellow and red body is stateless, is chaos. Her body is stolen territory.
I am the result of the movement of bodies on ships: as captains, as cargo, as indentured servants, as people full of hope for a change of survival."
"My ancestry centres on one crop: sugar. My history pulses with moments of miscegenation, a hybridity that eludes any bid I am asked to tick on census papers or job applications.
I am a song of sugar."
"I am a product of the east and west, north and south. These stories relieve me of the pain of belonging nowhere and give me the key to everywhere. As I once longed for a singular place, a singular ethnicity or plot of land over generations, I now long for its opposite, for a space beyond belonging. I have travelled to many places in order to scope a sense of ownership or repatriation, but as I try to square my politics with my privilege, it seems that my only true inheritance is that I am always running somewhere else."
"Blood brothers, in the blood, to sign your name in blood, in cold blood, bad blood, blue blood, blood guess, blood on your hands, blood and thunder: our relationship to blood is pervasive in language, in symbols, in fear and horror, in blood baths as societies oppose one another. Blood runs through us and warns us. In my anger over inequality I have become more and more hot-blooded. Perhaps this is progress."
"My youngest niece has wild, thick, tight curls that she has tamed in response to being the only black girl at an all-white high school. My eldest nephew is tall and lanky, big-boned, Viking-like, but with a face much like my Chinese grandmother's. As I listen, I catch myself thinking in these ethnic terms and feel ashamed. I have assigned body parts to regional definitions, and I am in the same trap of genes and ethnicity that I want others to escape."
"'What is race?' I say.
He shrugs.'Okay, what race are you?'
He looks at me briefly, then back at his phone and shrugs again. I feel guilty, forcing him to think about something he hasn't had to consider. When my brother prods him for an answer, he says, 'Everything.'"
"The main thing I want to tell the young people in my life around race is that the reparations my white self needs to make to my black and Indigenous self are not about race at all. The reparations have to do with taking action. Now. In shelving my obedience to a liberal system that says success is made in the backs of others, while state-sanctioned violence theoretically keeps me 'free.' That is not freedom."
"My original question — what am I? — is irrelevant. Apparently, I am a symphony."
Shame on Me is a poetic exploration into selfhood, mixed-race identity, and belonging. From a young age, McWatt is asked “What are you?” as if she is a science experiment of mixed chemicals instead of a blend of histories and ancestors. She spits in a tube to find out the genetic make up of her background though her family stories alone tell her that she has blood relatives of Chinese, Indian, South American Indigenous, Portuguese, French Jewish, African, and Scottish heritage.
This spare memoir is split into chapters that dissect human features that have been racialised over the centuries. Her eyes tell stories of her Chinese relative who spent her life running. She speaks to the history of racializing people based on hair, skin, blood, etc. as she struggles to find a place where she truly fits, truly belongs though she does not fit neatly into any of the boxes society has created for race.
Internalized racism runs deep in her family and she struggles to claim every part of her equally. To not value some of her ancestry over others. She sees her family's history in the shape of her lips, the texture of her hair, the childhood photos that she pores over trying to see the humanity in the faces of patriarchs and matriarchs. She seeks connection to the past to help her understand herself.
For those interested in memoirs, critical race theory, mixed-race studies, the history of race and colonization throughout the world, you will love Shame on Me. Some of my favourite quotes below, but this is only a small sampling. My copy is full of flags and underlinings; it was a delight to read her words. She expressed sophisticated ideas through the spare, beautiful, profound language. I'm going to share a few of the MANY passages I underlined. This book is moving in every sense.
"It's my African ancestor...on whom I focus my imagination....hers is a story that has been buried deepest, most painfully ignored. Hers is the story that bears such deep shame that it has been erased. But the body is a site of memory. If race is made by erecting borders, my body is a crossing, a hybrid many times over. My black and white and brown and yellow and red body is stateless, is chaos. Her body is stolen territory.
I am the result of the movement of bodies on ships: as captains, as cargo, as indentured servants, as people full of hope for a change of survival."
"My ancestry centres on one crop: sugar. My history pulses with moments of miscegenation, a hybridity that eludes any bid I am asked to tick on census papers or job applications.
I am a song of sugar."
"I am a product of the east and west, north and south. These stories relieve me of the pain of belonging nowhere and give me the key to everywhere. As I once longed for a singular place, a singular ethnicity or plot of land over generations, I now long for its opposite, for a space beyond belonging. I have travelled to many places in order to scope a sense of ownership or repatriation, but as I try to square my politics with my privilege, it seems that my only true inheritance is that I am always running somewhere else."
"Blood brothers, in the blood, to sign your name in blood, in cold blood, bad blood, blue blood, blood guess, blood on your hands, blood and thunder: our relationship to blood is pervasive in language, in symbols, in fear and horror, in blood baths as societies oppose one another. Blood runs through us and warns us. In my anger over inequality I have become more and more hot-blooded. Perhaps this is progress."
"My youngest niece has wild, thick, tight curls that she has tamed in response to being the only black girl at an all-white high school. My eldest nephew is tall and lanky, big-boned, Viking-like, but with a face much like my Chinese grandmother's. As I listen, I catch myself thinking in these ethnic terms and feel ashamed. I have assigned body parts to regional definitions, and I am in the same trap of genes and ethnicity that I want others to escape."
"'What is race?' I say.
He shrugs.'Okay, what race are you?'
He looks at me briefly, then back at his phone and shrugs again. I feel guilty, forcing him to think about something he hasn't had to consider. When my brother prods him for an answer, he says, 'Everything.'"
"The main thing I want to tell the young people in my life around race is that the reparations my white self needs to make to my black and Indigenous self are not about race at all. The reparations have to do with taking action. Now. In shelving my obedience to a liberal system that says success is made in the backs of others, while state-sanctioned violence theoretically keeps me 'free.' That is not freedom."
"My original question — what am I? — is irrelevant. Apparently, I am a symphony."
punchofwishes's review against another edition
dark
informative
slow-paced
2.0
I really struggled with this book. The basic premise really intrigued me and I was excited to read this for a class. However what followed was oneof the least well executed structures and most meandering, flat writing styles I have read in quite some time. The idea to divide this book into sections focusing on different parts of the body that have been racialised was really cool but the contents of the chapters were all over the place. There were many repetitions and subjects elaborated upon which I found tedious rather than engaging. This book tries to do many things but in my eyes it did few well. A big disappointment.
tenderbench's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.75
cassreading's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
This book gives a really wonderful look at how race constructs bodies, and it kept the perfect balance between personal / autobiographical and citational. I especially loved her reflections on psychoanalysis, which really struck a chord with me as a lesbian whose always been drawn to it despite, ya know, it's history w the gays.
thebankofbooks's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0