RACELESS

An intimate story about the meaning of family and the subjectivity of race.

In her debut memoir, Guardian columnist Lawton offers a unique perspective on identity and family in an era of racial awakening. The author guides readers through her childhood as a mixed-race girl raised by two White parents who insisted that her darker skin was the product of a so-called “throwback gene.” After the death of her father, Lawton took a DNA test that forced her to confront why her Blackness was always treated as a burden instead of a self-evident truth. “I was an inquisitive child with an anti-authoritarian streak that would rear its head at inopportune times, but which was probably linked to the fact that my very existence was contradictory and nonsensical,” she writes. “I was looking to find my place in the world around me.” As she tells her personal story, the author weaves in discussions of such relevant concepts as transracial identity, Afro-futurism and the importance of Black hair, without assuming that readers are familiar with any of them. She helpfully situates her epiphanies about identity within the robust canon of contemporary Black thinkers, from bell hooks to Zora Neale Hurston to Solange. But the book isn’t just a passive examination of race. Lawton uprooted her life in search of community, traveling to Cuba, Nicaragua, Morocco, and Vietnam. The book is sure to resonate with those who have had to negotiate their existence in the “in-between” or who possess identities that defy old-fashioned, traditional norms. Lawton gives herself, and others, permission to contain multitudes. “Being yourself,” she writes, “is easier once you free yourself from the baggage of other people’s expectations, when you look in the mirror and accept that the person staring back at you is a culmination of everything you have always wanted to be.”

A timely, engaging exploration of family and racial belonging featuring many valuable lessons.