When I Was White

by Sarah Valentine

Overview

The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine's childhood as a white girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a black man.

At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race.

And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from white to black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her white identity. The supreme discomfort her white family and community felt about addressing issues of race–her race–is a microcosm of race relationships in America.

A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah's story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her "passing" was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she'd grown up with, in order to embrace a new one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250146755
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

SARAH VALENTINE, Ph.D., is a widely published author and translator whose interests include Russian literature, poetry, mixed-race experience, mystery, horror, true crime, folklore, and ghost stories. In 2013 she was a Lannan fellow and has taught literature and creative writing at Princeton, UCLA, UC-Riverside, and Northwestern University. When I Was White is her memoir about growing up in Pittsburgh as a mixed race African American in a white family; she explores the process of unearthing family secrets, breaking deep-rooted taboos, and how to construct an identity that is made of contradictions. She currently lives in Northern Nevada, where she enjoys great cheeseburgers, funny cat videos, and staying home.

Editorial Reviews

04/22/2019

In this fervent and heartfelt memoir, Valentine, an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University, tells of coming-of-age in Pittsburgh, Pa., as the daughter of two white parents who refused to acknowledge an ethnicity hinted at by her appearance, and a family secret.. Her mother and business consultant father were married in the 1970s when Valentine was born, and she describes an ordinary childhood in a loving family of Italian and Irish descent. Early on, she clues in that she is “different” and even though her parents avoid the topic of race, others make note of her darker skin color (for instance, a school guidance counselor suggests she apply for a minority scholarship). Valentine attends Carnegie Mellon University, and at age 27 she presses her mother on the details of her past; her mother claims she was raped at a college party by an unknown black man (though her recollection is vague). The narrative moves fluidly between past and present as Valentine tries to make sense of the lies and misconceptions that have plagued her throughout her life. Beset with conflicting emotions and a sense of betrayal, Valentine begins a futile search to locate her biological father, and the revelation of Valentine’s conception (later confirmed by a DNA test that revealed 45% sub-Saharan African) will be simultaneously startling and yet expected to the reader. This is a disturbing and engrossing tale of deep family secrets. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Named one of PureWow's "Books We Can't Wait to Read in August"
One of Essence's "10 Books We're Dying to Toss Into Our Summer Totes"
A BookRiot "50 of the Best Books to Read this Summer"
One of Bustle's "21 New Memoirs that will Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You this Summer"
A pick for The Millions' "Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2019 Book Preview"

"Valentine is at her best when we see her shift through history, creating well-crafted scenes that resonate with depth and emotional weight in a commitment to get to the truth...Here, quite simply, is a masterful explication on the formation of self and identity—of learning to trust yourself instead of the lies other people, no matter how close, tell you about who you are."—NPR.com

"Forced to examine her docile suburban upbringing through the lens of a new racial identity, Valentine claims her power by deciding who she is and who she wants to be."—Essence

"Fervent and heartfelt. The narrative moves fluidly between past and present as Valentine tries to make sense of the lies and misconceptions that have plagued her throughout her life. This is a disturbing and engrossing tale of deep family secrets."—Publishers Weekly

"Deftly written . . . Valentine's journey of self-discovery is affecting, a hard-won quest to arrive at an origin story that suits the facts rather than turns away from them. A valuable contribution to the literature of race."—Kirkus Reviews

"We feel every step of Valentine's struggle, from feeling physically broken to becoming emotionally stronger as she reaches for self-acceptance and self-definition."—Booklist

"Moving and analytically rigorous. [When I was White] is most compelling as an exploration of identity."—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"[Valentine] has written a narrative that's honest, unflinching, and true to herself. In the last paragraph of When I Was White, the author offers readers a rich and complex idea, rather than a simple statement. 'It is in the breaking apart that we find beauty.'"—New York Journal of Books

"In this startlingly honest and yet tender memoir, Sarah Valentine unpacks the story of a young woman whose life is shattered by a dark family secret. How does a daughter forgive a mother for the betrayal of lying about her birth and her true father? How does a daughter cope with her mother's trauma and find acceptance in a family where she never fully belonged? How do you go from being white to black with one revelation? In elegant and gripping prose, Valentine takes us on a journey through America’s suburban heart of darkness; in many ways, this is the story deep in America’s history—racism, fear of miscegeny, and whether or not to believe a woman's accusation of rape—issues that continue to plague us today. All of this is woven into a story of anger, love and ultimately forgiveness. This book leans beautifully into transformation and a well-earned grace. A perfect book for our times."—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Secret History of Las Vegas

"Transitioning between races and racial identities provokes interesting questions—and Valentine's memoir effectively deepens the conversation. Reading When I was White reminds me that learning to appreciate and love my skin is ongoing. Women of color who have complicated relationships with this process will find validation in this powerful memoir."—Women's Review of Books

From the Publisher

2019-05-26
"You're the blackest white girl I've ever seen": Writer and translator Valentine explores a past that had been carefully hidden from her.

There are phenotypes, and then there are culture, nature and nurture, and all that comes between. Born in 1977, the author, whose biological father was African American, grew up thinking she was Irish and Italian, the fact of her parentage deliberately hidden. "I didn't know much about race," she writes of a childhood friendship with a child who looked like her, "but I knew it existed; I thought some people were black, but most people were normal." That learned sense of "normalcy" comes under close examination in this deftly written book, marked by all kinds of telling milestones: Her classmates called her "Slash," the nickname of the mixed-race Guns N' Roses guitarist, while a Nigerian guest speaker in a middle school social studies class called on her to model a fabric used in traditional clothing, yielding a dawning awareness that she, and not someone else, was "the other." The point was driven home when a guidance counselor encouraged her to apply for minority scholarships, to which her adoptive father responded that she would be depriving someone who needed them; he added, "don't tell your mother about this." Her family's denial of the obvious seems puzzling, but Valentine has much to say about the intersection of the personal, the biological, and the cultural. She writes, for instance, that she became a fluent speaker of Russian, with the ability to think and write at a highly accomplished level about Russian literature and with plenty of time on the ground in Russia, but all that near-native ability "didn't make me Russian." In a nice turn, she later writes of discovering the existence of a diasporic group that moved into the Caucasus in the 17th century, "making them literal African Caucasians." Valentine's journey of self-discovery is affecting, a hard-won quest to arrive at an origin story that suits the facts rather than turns away from them.

A valuable contribution to the literature of race and its problematics.

Kirkus Reviews