09/01/2019
New York Times Magazine contributing writer Williams (Losing My Cool ) probes his own experiences and ponders the future of his biracial daughter, Marlow, to explore dimensions of personal and group identity. He excoriates the social construction of "race," illustrating its illusions by parsing what he considers to be an anachronistic and fading lexicon that the black-white conceptual binary of the one-drop rule has imposed. The essentialism of groups such as "blacks" and "whites," or of conceptions such as a "black sensibility" or "black culture," exposes illogical racial classifications, he maintains. Williams also insists that counterproductive fictions confuse labels with lived experience and reduce individuals from actualities to abstractions. Arguing for transformational exchange in order to break the tortuous cycle of racial determinism, Williams asserts the self-healing potential to renounce race and transcend racism at an interpersonal level. VERDICT Provocative in its review of and reflections on race and racism amid continuing de facto segregation, this work argues that personal identity does not exist as a checked box. It promises to appeal to readers willing at least to consider unlearning race so as to imagine a future without it and advance his vision of a multigenerational transformation of social repair.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
★ 08/05/2019
Williams (Losing My Cool ) follows in the footsteps of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates to craft a provocative philosophical argument about the role of race in human identity. He acknowledges during this trio of essays that he has had some highly unusual experiences. “The View From Near and Far” deals with his youth as the light-skinned son of a black father and a white mother; his first trip to France, where many people thought he was of Middle Eastern descent; and his realization that identity is heavily influenced by the way others see a person. “Marrying Out” explores his marriage to a white French woman and how his father conveyed to him that black American life is “conditioned by local historical circumstance... not beholden to it.” “Self-Portrait of an Ex-Black Man” leads up to Williams’s decision to follow in artist Adrian Piper’s footsteps by “retiring” from race. Claiming the uniqueness of the black experience, he argues, is still buying into the racist idea that race is a centrally important facet of identity. The solution, he posits, is to live in “the humanizing specificity” of people as people, not as vessels for historicized prejudice. Regardless of whether readers agree with his conclusions, these essays are intellectually rigorous, written in fluid prose, and frequently exhilarating. (Oct.)
"A gorgeously written and deeply knowledgeable account of fatherhood, identity, and race. Tender and probing, respectful of intellectual disagreement and of the raw emotions these subjects can stir, it nevertheless proceeds fearlessly and rigorously toward his own original and challenging conclusions. This is a book that will surely provoke, inform, and move readers, regardless of where they stand on the political and philosophical divide."
"A brave and powerful book that I could not put down. At a time when white supremacy is resurgent in many countries, should we fight it by insisting on the equality of the races or the elimination of race as a social and biological category? It is a question that needs to be asked and a debate that needs to be had."
"Thomas Chatterton Williams has the essential things a writer needs—command of language, complexity and depth of thought, and, maybe above all, courage. In Self-Portrait in Black and White he sticks his neck way out in pursuit of unfashionable, necessary truths. This book brings a blast of fresh air that will change your thinking about race in America."
"An elegant and sharp-eyed writer....In a publishing environment where analyses of race tend to call out white fragilities and catalogue historical injustices, Self-Portrait in Black and White is a counterintuitive, courageous addition."
Washington Post - Carlos Lozada
"An elegantly rendered and trenchantly critical reflection on ‘race’ and identity—one that is perfectly suited to our time. This is a subtle, unsettling, and brave book. Using his own journey through life as point of departure, Thomas Chatterton Williams launches a major assault on the conventional wisdom about racial categorization in America. Not only does he envision a New World; he dares to point the way toward how we all might yet arrive on those uncharted shores."
"How does anyone confront a history that demands what they believe about themselves is different from what’s required to love their children? The answer, and path to it, is complicated. But here is a son embodying the lessons of a father. Some will walk away from this believing that black, like white, is a social construct that needs to be abandoned—but all will walk way knowing that a father’s love cannot be quantified by anything as whimsical as skin complexion."
"A fluent, captivating, if often disquieting story....We witness Williams on a journey of both self-discovery and self-creation, and his memoir is most valuable as a way deeper into, as opposed to a way out of, race talk."
"This small book poses a very large question: how to become a self? Williams uses his own story to remind us that inner freedom depends on escaping the insidious categories of history and the suffocating clichés of the present. It is a stirring call to genuine liberation."
"In fifty years, smart students will be writing senior theses seeking to understand why anyone in the early 21st century found anything in Self-Portrait in Black and White at all controversial. For now, curl up with this book to join a conversation on race about progress rather than piety, thought rather than therapy."
"[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not to admire him. At a time of increasing division, his philosophizing evinces an underlying generosity. He reaches both ways across the aisle of racism, arguing above all for reciprocity, and in doing so begins to theorize the temperate peace of which all humanity is sorely in need."
New York Times Book Review (cover) - Andrew Solomon
★ 2019-07-08
Williams (Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture , 2010), a 2019 New America Fellow and contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine , moves away from the "Black Man" label to offer a chronicle of why he is aiming to think of himself as "an ex-Black Man." Raised in the 1980s in New Jersey by a "black" father and a "white" mother, the author grew up thinking of himself as black. The trigger for writing this lyrical, incisive memoir was the birth of his daughter in 2013, followed by a son. They are also mixed-race given the author's marriage to Valentine, a Frenchwoman. (The family resides in Paris.) Though Williams is determined to move beyond categorizations of "black" and "white," in order to communicate clearly in this memoir, he knows he must rely heavily "on our language's descriptive conventions," which he explains in the opening author's note. We see the author's psychological struggle as he thinks through the conundrums, including what the confusion might mean for his white-looking children. In the hands of a lesser writer, the back and forth of his pondering could have sunk the memoir. However, it succeeds spectacularly for three main reasons: the author's relentlessly investigative thought process, consistent candor, and superb writing style. Almost every page contains at least one sentence so resonant that it bears rereading for its impact. The lengthy prologue is grounded heavily in discussions of race as a social construct. Part 1 takes readers through Williams' adolescence, Part 2 through his marriage, and Part 3 through dealing with his family on both sides. In the epilogue, the author speculates on "the shape of things to come." Shelve this one alongside Kiese Laymon's Heavy , Mitchell Jackson's Survival Math , and Imani Perry's Breathe .
An insightful, indispensable memoir.
