SURVIVING THE WHITE GAZE

A probing, wise investigation of racial identity.

Throughout the memoir, Carroll, a podcast host and cultural critic who develops a wide variety of content at WNYC, demonstrates the most indelible qualities of the genre: an ability to inhabit a version of one’s self that no longer exists; an instinct for what’s important and what isn’t; and a voice that implies personal growth gained through missteps and ultimately self-knowledge. Born to a White mother and Black father, the author was adopted by a White New Hampshire couple with a laissez-faire approach to parenting and very little concept of race. Growing up with a fierce desire to fit in with the popular White kids at school, she entered into a toxic relationship with her birth mother, Tess, a narcissist who took every opportunity to tear down and interrogate her daughter’s Blackness and self-esteem. The narrative, which reflects the author’s “decades-long, self-initiated rite of passage,” is a blunt, urgent study of racial identity and an attempt to chronicle “my ultimate arrival at the complicated depths of my own blackness.” Along the way, she encountered a variety of racists, passive and aggressive, and a series of White boys who served as goals to be attained. Carroll also underwent a series of hairstyles, which become symbols for stages of self-actualization. But the heart of the book lies in her back and forth with Tess, who cast a spell on her daughter even as she spewed racist venom and situated herself more as a jealous peer than a dutiful parent. Carroll’s quest for authenticity fuels the text, but there’s also a quietly tragic subtext of failed parenting, of the many ways one generation can put its own needs before those of the next. The author deftly untangles these pitfalls, creating a specific and personal story that is also compelling for general readers.

A deeply resonant memoir of hard-won authenticity.