White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing is the story of Gail Lukasik’s mother’s “passing,” Gail’s struggle with the shame of her mother’s choice, and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption. In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother’s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother’s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother’s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage. With a foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS's Genealogy Roadshow, this unique and fascinating story of coming to terms with oneself breaks down barriers.

A great gift book that takes a thought-provoking look at a black and white world. Full of clever stories and perspectives on love, work, life, it demonstrates that behind every black cloud there is a silver--or white--lining.

Intimate and honest essays on motherhood, marriage, love, and acceptance Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted child, Shiv, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter Shiv from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating her child on the realities and dangers of being black in America. In other essays, she discusses growing up in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family. Both poignant and challenging, Brown White Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.

A story about the trials and triumphs of a Black chef from Queens, New York, and a White media entrepreneur from Staten Island who built a relationship and a restaurant in the Deep South, hoping to bridge biases and get people talking about race, gender, class, and culture. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GARDEN & GUN • “Black, White, and The Grey blew me away.”—David Chang In this dual memoir, Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano take turns telling how they went from tentative business partners to dear friends while turning a dilapidated formerly segregated Greyhound bus station into The Grey, now one of the most celebrated restaurants in the country. Recounting the trying process of building their restaurant business, they examine their most painful and joyous times, revealing how they came to understand their differences, recognize their biases, and continuously challenge themselves and each other to be better. Through it all, Bailey and Morisano display the uncommon vulnerability, humor, and humanity that anchor their relationship, showing how two citizens commit to playing their own small part in advancing equality against a backdrop of racism.

An “engrossing narrative history” (Joanna Scutts, The Lily) of the enslaved girl whose photograph transformed the abolition movement. When a decades-long court battle resulted in her family’s freedom in 1855, seven-year-old Mary Mildred Williams unexpectedly became the face of American slavery. Due to generations of sexual violence, Mary’s skin was so light she “passed” as white—a fact abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner knew would be the key to his white audience’s sympathy. Girl in Black and White restores Mary to her rightful place in history, “probing issues of colorism and racial politics” (New York Times Book Review) that still affect us profoundly today.

The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about communicating across racial and ethnic divides and pursuing antiracism. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand dynamics of race and racial inequality in America.

Where did I come from? Where did my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents come from? Who were they? What race were they? Why were there so many light skin people with white features in my family? My inner city Los Angeles friends had been instructing me to “get back to my roots” for years. I was finally going to take their advice. Reconnecting with my West Virginia family was the starting point. After meeting my 88 year old great-Aunt Bunch for the first time, the pieces of our family puzzle came together as I sat in her kitchen listening to her recount our family history, and what I heard was fascinating! From White to Black tells the story of my family, as told to me by my great-Aunt Bunch and through the family history records of her great-cousin, Grace. Bunch grew up in a family that had been white for almost 100 years… until the One Drop Law changed everything. In 1930 Bunch's family was subsequently reclassified as Negro when her grandmother's 1/4 black ancestry was revealed in a county census. This sudden reclassification and its ensuing segregation resulted in a backlash of racism and discrimination that forever changed the destinies of Bunch and her brothers and sisters. “From White to Black” is an American story. It's the story of a Black family that started off White.