Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self [Paperback]

Rebecca Walker (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 8, 2002

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her parents divorced, leaving her a lonely only child ferrying between two worlds that only seemed to grow further apart, Rebecca was no longer sure what she represented. In this book, Rebecca Leventhal Walker attempts to define herself as a soul instead of a symbol—and offers a new look at the challenge of personal identity, in a story at once strikingly unique and truly universal.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The daughter of famed African American writer Alice Walker and liberal Jewish lawyer Mel Leventhal brings a frank, spare style and detail-rich memories the this compelling contribution to the growing subgenre of memoirs by biracial authors about life in a race-obsessed society. Walker examines her early years in Mississippi as the loved, pampered child of parents active in the Civil Rights movement in the bloody heart of the segregated South. Torn apart by the demands of their separate careers, her parents' union eventually lost steam and failed, leaving Walker to shuttle back and forth across country to spend time with them both. Deeply analytical and reflective, she assumes the resonant voices of an inquisitive child, a highly sensitive teen and finally a young woman who is confronted with the harsh color prejudices of her friends, teachers and families-both black and Jewish-and who tires desperately to make sense of rigid cultural boundaries for which she was never fully prepared by her parents. Whether she's commenting on a white ballet teacher who doubts she'll ever be good because her black butt's too big, Jewish relatives who treat her like an alien, or a boyfriend who feels she's not black enough, Walker uses the same elegant, discreet candor she brings to her discussion of her mother and the development of her free-spirited sexuality. Her artfulness in baring her psyche, spirit and sexuality will attract a wealth of deserved praise. (Jan. 2) Forecast: Coming the heels of her mother's story collection, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (which offers a fictional treatment of Alice Walker's marriage to Leventhal), this literary debut by the younger Walker, who has been recognized by Time as one of her generation's leaders, is destined to generate excitement. Although Walker is likely to be compared to Lisa Jones (the daughter of Amiri Baraka and Jewish writer Hetty Jones), who tackled the myth of tragic mulatto in Bullet Proof Diva (1995), a collection of columns from the Village Voice, Walker's higher profile and narrative treatment of these themes will draw a wider audience who no doubt will greet her warmly on her 10-city tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker and attorney Mel Leventhal, shuttled among Mississippi, San Francisco, the Bronx, and Washington, DC, after her parents divorced. Here is her story of the need to redefine herself in each new setting.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 322 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573229075
• ISBN-13: 978-1573229074
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 59 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self February 17, 2001

By "miridion"

Format:Hardcover

I am also 31, mixed, have a Jewish step-dad, and was raised by activist parents as well. Obviously, I ran to get this book.

I also saw a reading Rebecca Walker did on CSPAN in Maryland. She has an amazing voice and she really brought the material alive during the reading. I think she has a vast amount of wisdom & experience to share and she handled the question and answer segment amazingly well.

Unfortunately, this book is not all it could have been. It reads like a very good first or second draft but it simply isn't cohesive or particularly insightful and should not have been published yet. I really wanted Ms. Walker to move beyond cataloging events to weaving a story, a narrative that explored her experience AND connected it to a larger discussion about race.

The experiences she had especially having activist parents are ones that many of us can relate to but she never pushes the work past her self. Why does she think her parents raised her the ways in which they did? An exploration of their motives could illuminate some of the ways an entire country was shaped by the 60's.

She doesn't extrapolate from her experience to show how her experience as a "brown" woman is significant, how it is different than mono-racial teenage angst. Maybe that complete experience is ineffable - but there aren't any real moments that show the complexity of our experience as mixed race people.

She really needed someone who believed in the importance of this book and the story she could have told. I think her editor simply thought this would sell based on the subject matter and the fact that her mom is a famous writer.

I applaud Ms. Walker's attempt but I am disappointed in the final product.

All you mixed people out there - we need to write and connect with each other - keep working! And we really need some male mixed voices!

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Delighted and Disappointed... June 10, 2004

By Alison Gilbert

Format:Hardcover

While I was moved almost to the point of tears on several occasions upon reading Walker's novel, I was disappointed with the end. It seems Rebecca has yet to come to terms with her "Shifting self". Walker writes about how she was able to weave in and out of two radically different worlds (the world of her black mother and free-living San Francisco culture, to the world of the white upper middle class New York suburb Jewish culture). She explores the way in which she adapted almost completely to one or the other culture whenever it was needed or expected. However, rather than coming to terms with her rich bi-racial and colorful cultural background and integrating both of these into forming her own unique identity, in my opinion Rebecca chose one identity over the other. Legally changing her name and thus further suppressing her identity from any resemblance of her Jewish and white background deeply saddened me. Although difficult, there are ways of incorporating aspects of both identities into one self - despite the state of racial animosity we live under in this country, both her parents were clearly able to do so. It is clear that Rebecca felt a distinct resentment toward her father and the eventual life he chose to lead; however, as a Jewish American I could not help but feel disappointed that Rebecca chose to identify with one side of her oppressed bi-racial identity over the other. She describes the life of her father, stepmother, half siblings and the culture of Larchmont, NY as privileged, wealthy, racist and generally homogeneous. While all of this may very well be close to the truth, what about being Jewish? What about all of the baggage that goes along with being a religious minority, the legacy of the Holocaust, the anti-Semitism everywhere in this world - what about that struggle? Rebecca seems to clump the "white" experiences of her life into offensive stereotypes of Jewish summer camp, and generalized stereotypes of growing up in suburban NY. She remembers those experiences as so much more of an outsider than the "black" experiences she remembers. In response to a previous review, someone wrote, "the key for me in understanding is that she cannot and will not be contained by neat categories." I could not disagree more with this after finishing this book. Walker is almost all about neat categories particularly when it comes to her "whiteness". Rather than drawing on the unique and rich history and background of her Jewish white self - she tends to wrap that side of her up into neat stereotypes. If I were to analyze her "shifting self" based on reading this book, I would say that it is this process and denial that contributes to, if not causes her confusion as a bi-racial woman and the arduous struggle she recalls in forming and constructing her identity.

All of that said, I cannot help but love this book, as completely opposite as that sounds. Walker's writing is poetic, moving and draws the reader into a world that even if unfamiliar casts a spiritual light on the struggle of bi-racialism in America. I find myself wanting to know everything about Ms. Rebecca Walker after reading this, combing the internet for scraps of information about her life and what she has done since the writing of Black, White and Jewish. I highly recommend this book

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly Universal...but Something is Missing October 8, 2002

By Kacy Wilson

Format:Paperback

One day I was walking the aisles of [a local bookstore] when I stumbled across a large display featuring Rebecca Walker's childhood memoir: Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. I was instantly struck by reverie as I recalled the first novel I had ever read (without having a teacher assign it) some thirteen years earlier: Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Perhaps it was with the nostalgia that I remember discovering reading for the pleasure of experiencing the world through another human beings eyes that made me linger at that display. I decided that I liked Ms. Walker's "smiling eyes" and since we both shared an ethnically indiscernible appearance (the "what are you mixed with?" syndrome), I sat down with a coffee and began reading the book. After all I thought, writing talent probably runs in the family. Although I was compelled to read along I was thinking that the big grandiose realizations about what race means in America and what it means to the individual who is hard to categorize were just around the corner. The profound social commentary never came. Neither did any revealing introspection, and although I was entertained by the account of a childhood that far excelled my own in terms of scandal and discovery, I was left disappointed.

Simply put, Black, White and Jewish is a recollection without any assessment. Rebecca Walker's story is summed up in the paragraph on the back of the book. During the Civil Rights Movement, Jewish activist lawyer, Mel Leventhal and Black activist writer Alice Walker, married and had a child named Rebecca in the unlikeliest of places for 1969: Jackson Mississippi. As the political climate changed and her parents relationship ended in divorce, Rebecca was forced to grow up shuttling back and forth across the country, searching for her self in the east coast Jewish culture, the boho San Francisco culture, and the Black urban southern culture of Atlanta. Rebecca was tossed to and fro by confusion and identity crises with every move and along the way she come to learn more and more about who Rebecca is instead of what Rebecca was born into.

Besides the title, there is a lot of irony in Black, White and Jewish. One of the early ironies that the reader discovers is that as exotic as her lineage is, Walker's story of finding her identity is painfully familiar to just about any teenager. We can all identify with the trials of being new somewhere and feeling targeted or left out or just plain different. You don't have to be of any peculiar heritage to know this experience. Being 15 years old will suffice. Even more ironic is that Walker still believes that it was the search for her identity in spite of being a racial/cultural anomaly in a country where ethnicity is such a dividing distinction (second only to gender) that makes her story so compelling. Perhaps Walker thinks we can all learn from her unique vantage point. But the truth is that Walker's perspective is hardly refreshing and has little to convey in spite of her unique perspective. Finding one's identity within a family of different values is not new and Walker doesn't really have the insight to draw any profound conclusions. This book reads more like a diary that was being kept all along as it was happening, than adult reflections on a turbulent childhood. The greatest irony is that in spite of being an adult when she wrote this book, she seems rather immature in her assessment of her childhood. She is still nonchalantly firing arrows at the things that made her feel insecure as a child (society, race, sexuality, teen-age cliques, etc.) rather than finally attacking the source of so much insecurity; her parents, and namely her mother. Being the daughter of a famous Pulitzer Prize winning writer perhaps made Walker feel special and so maybe it is asking for too much for Walker to see her mother for who she is. Perhaps Walker thinks she was supposed to share such a creative and wonderful mother with the rest of the world, but I can't help but read this book and feel that Walker was simply a lonely child that has repressed the real suffering that took place in her life as she was neglected. It was her mother's responsibility to make her feel special for who she was and most importantly to make her feel safe and secure and loved in a world that demanded that she choose an identity. In that regard, Walker's memoir reads like any other story of a child that wasn't loved enough and wasn't made to feel special enough by the people that mattered the most. Well Walker is a rather intelligent woman and given that this is her formal introduction into the literary world, she can only grow from here. But something tells me that eventually (and maybe already) she is going to regret having written and published this book. Maybe regret is a strong word here, but she will have to come to grips with how superficial and narcissistic here treatment is. Or at least she is going to want to give it another try and this time without the rose tinted glasses.

As a final note, I would like to say that it is only natural that Rebecca Walker would think that so much of what shaped her as a human being came to down to her unique racial identity rather than whether she felt loved or wanted or all of the other feelings that healthy children should have. I imagine people harped on her ethinicity constantly because that it he kind of thing people focos on: the strange and exotic. Ask anyone who is of bi-racial or bi-cultural lineage and you will be regaled with how tired they get of explaining how they could grow up normal in spite of having a Catholic mother and Muslim father or whatever the provactive mixture may be. The sad commentary that this book leaves the reader with is that Rebecca was never made to feel unique for anything she did as a child (and perhaps since) so she is still harping on the only thing that seems to make her stand out-her race. But she is more than her race, a lesson that she seems to try to communicate she has learned, but this reader is not so certain.