One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets [Hardcover]

Bliss Broyard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2007

Two months before he died of cancer, renowned literary critic Anatole Broyard called his grown son and daughter to his side, intending to reveal a secret he had kept all their lives and most of his own: he was black. But even as he lay dying, the truth was too difficult for him to share, and it was his wife who told Bliss that her WASPy, privileged Connecticut childhood had come at a price. Ever since his own parents, New Orleans Creoles, had moved to Brooklyn and began to "pass" in order to get work, Anatole had learned to conceal his racial identity. As he grew older and entered the ranks of the New York literary elite, he maintained the façade. Now his daughter Bliss tries to make sense of his choices and the impact of this revelation on her own life. She searches out the family she never knew in New York and New Orleans, and considers the profound consequences of racial identity. With unsparing candor and nuanced insight, Broyard chronicles her evolution from sheltered WASP to a woman of mixed race ancestry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For Broyard, who was raised as white in Connecticut, the discovery that her father, the writer and critic Anatole Broyard, wasn't exactly white raised the question of how black I was—a question that set her in search of the history of the most well-known defector from the black race in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the first section, Broyard weaves her privileged childhood together with later travels to New Orleans (her father's birthplace) and Los Angeles (where there is a determinedly white set of Broyards as well as a determinedly black set). Part two extends from the first Broyard, a Frenchman arriving in mid-18th century Louisiana territory, to six-year-old Anatole's 1927 arrival in Brooklyn. The last section is devoted to Anatole's life. Broyard's identity quest takes her on an odyssey through social, military, legal, Louisiana and general American history, as well as U.S. race relations and her family DNA, introducing innumerable relatives, classmates, friends and employers, and making for a rather overstuffed account. Fortunately, she's got an ear for dialogue, an eye for place and a storyteller's pacing. But the most compelling element is her ambivalent tenor: Was my father's choice rooted in self-preservation or in self-hatred?... Was he a hero or a cad? Part eulogy, part apologia, the answer is indirect: But he was my dad and we loved each other. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

A decade ago in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, noted black scholar Henry Louis Gates wrote an unflattering portrait of Anatole Broyard and his "passing." Critic Art Winslow suggests that Bliss Broyard’s memoir may be "intended as a rejoinder to Gates." Author of the short story collection My Father, Dancing (2000; New York Times Notable Book), Broyard offers a passionate, lively narrative packed with hundreds of interviews with family members (both black and white), friends, lovers, and others who knew her father well. The result is not always seamless; the book’s intent is not always clear; and Jonathan Yardley finds Broyard’s "fretting about her racial identity" bothersome. Still, the author generally succeeds in offering an ambitious and personal perspective on issues relevant to her own family and anyone interested in race relations in America.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (September 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316163503
• ISBN-13: 978-0316163507
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #771,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sins of the Father: Race, Identity and Secrets, November 8, 2007

By 

Dera R Williams (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets (Hardcover)

When her mother exposed her father's secret while he was dying in 1990, Bliss Broyard accepted it but was not ready to deal with the complexities of learning her father was of Black heritage. She was not ready when an essay, "The Passing of Anatole Broyard", appeared in Henry Louis Gates' collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man in 1997. When she was finally ready, Broyard wrote a wonderful tribute that is a memoir, a family history, a discourse on race, culture, and identity that is worthy of being a classic.

What does a twenty four-year old woman, born and raised in Connecticut with all the trappings of an upper-class WASP environment do when she finds out she is an impostor of sorts? That she is not White...well not according to the one-drop rule that this country imposes. That her father kept a part of him from her, thereby withholding a part of her history? Bliss' reaction and that of her older brother, Todd, was why all the secrecy? Why was it kept from us?

Unfortunately, Bliss did not get the answers from her father, Anatole Broyard, the New York Times critic and writer. Thus, she began the journey that would lead her to the truth. That journey took her to meet relatives in New Orleans, Los Angeles and Brooklyn, where she met her aunt Shirley, the sister her father had avoided for most of his adult life. With the help of her newfound family, Bliss began to trace the Broyard family history. But it was the emotional and mental journey about race and identity that would prove to be the most complex.

It began with Etienne Broyard of France, Bliss' great-great-great grandfather who came to New Orleans from France in the 1700s. Succeeding generations included mixed-race women of African heritage or mixed-race and Free People of Color also known as Gens de Libre Coleur. The majority of the family had a "white looking appearance" and at different times, passed for White, most often for economic reasons. Economic reasons were the main reason Anatole's parents, Paul and Edna, passé blanc when they moved from New Orleans to Brooklyn, New York in the 1920s when he was six years old. In order to secure employment as a carpenter, Paul became White in the daytime. When Anatole started college he slowly began his journey of subterfuge.

To understand Bliss' angst and confusion about where she fit on the color line, one must first understand the dynamics of the Creole of Color culture and the convoluted caste system of Louisiana. The three-tier racial categorization; White, Black, and Creole/mixed race was an accepted practice. But as no race or culture is a monolith, there are different feelings among Creoles about identity today. Some Creoles have assimilated either into the white culture intermarrying/mixing/bleaching until the African blood is obliterated, while others have assimilated into the African American community and identify as Black. Bliss' family fell into both categories as well as those who held themselves separate and viewed themselves as a stand-alone race and or culture. Bliss began to navigate the terrain of race and how identity is viewed in America. What did it mean that her father was of African heritage to her existence? From the New Orleans Mardi Gras balls and the Seventh Ward to the Creole neighborhoods of Los Angeles to bohemian Greenwich Village where her father lived his young adult life, Bliss used her journalistic investigative skills to find out the mystery of it all. Cloaked in myriad of emotions; anger, frustration and feelings of betrayal, she came to know the flawed man who was her beloved father and why he chose the path he did.

Broyard's left no leaf unturned in her impeccable, exhaustive research. The interviews, resources and bibliographies will keep one researching for years. There has not been such a personal undertaking on the meaning of race and identity as exhibited in this work. I commend Bliss for taking on such a delicate, monumental task. This book is highly recommended for those who study race and culture, as well as those who research genealogy and history. This is definitely one to keep in the family library.

Dera Williams

APOOO BookClub

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, unblinking, and kind -- I couldn't put it down, September 28, 2007

By 

Lavinia G. Schwarz (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets (Hardcover)

I read this book in three sittings -- plus two middle of the

night wakings up where I read for hours more.

Not only is it wonderfully written, but Bliss Broyard is willing to turn

over all the stones and gems she finds, and look directly at what she sees. Like A.M. Homes, and Tobias Wolff, Broyard has a clear-eyed

willingness to review the past and to experience new things while still remaining a thinking, sensitive person. She doesn't compromise or lose herself despite the demands of others. Instead she grows and lets us grow along with her.

The creole experience in New Orleans is unique in American race relations. It takes time and an open mind and heart to explore the world of the free people of color in the French colonies. Much of this history doesn't overlap with the experiences of others from the African diaspora. We learn about the horrors of the Middle Passage slave trade in school and through film, but a first introduction to the creole world, especially after learning it is your own ancestral world, can be astonishing. This book is not only a personal journey, but a wonderful introduction to the rich and ongoing history of creoles in the United States.

I cannot recommend One Drop more highly.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All time favorite non-fiction book, June 21, 2008

By 

Anonymous (Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets (Hardcover)

Bliss Broyard is amazing, and I am so glad that she wrote this book. I discovered her existence seeing an excerpt from African American Lives and became curious about her journey. I had just had my own DNA testing done to confirm or dispel a family story about us being American Indian and Scottish, instead of Irish as we'd been told. When my results came in, showing a strong subsaharan African and Egyptian Berber influence (in addition to the Scottish and American Indian parts) I was startled and surprised. I didn't know what to make of it, or how to incorporate this new knowledge into my self-identity. So, reading Ms. Broyard's book was amazing for me, because I'd gone through many of the challenges she spoke of. I was somewhat jealous of her ability to connect to relatives and gain so much genealogy information, as I've been doing these searches for 10 years and not gotten so much. Her book is a testament to rethinking the memory of her father and making meaning for herself. Her writing is exceptional, and she's honest, sincere. I wish there were more authors (or people in general!) like Ms. Broyard. Good for her for publishing this! I've passed on my copy to other friends who struggle with their multiple cultures and identities, and gifted a copy to a friend who's interested in his own genealogy. Go Ms. Broyard, and bless you for the courage it took to write this book!