Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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

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.

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!

Bliss' voyage was very special to me. I felt her pain and confusion and unfortunately could relate too closely to her tale. Her account is so honest and self-reflective that it was embarassing at times to be privvy to her thoughts. As a mother,I wanted to hug her and explain to her all the racial garbage that American society dumps on us. As a Creole of Color whose mother, grandmother and God knows how many other relatives passed while I couldn't, I can relate to her family stories and pain. Yet, this young lady taught me so much with her amazing historical research. If I ever drag myself back to Louisiana to my maternal home, I will have lots of tips to learn more about my family. For example, who is my Italian grandfather and does a great grandfather's portrait as a judge still hang in a county courthouse? I'd love to have her help me retrace my roots. I am amused at her stories of people discovering their black ancestry and I laugh at the thought that if people in the 30s only knew that my red-headed grandmother, a magazine cover girl, was actually black/Negroe/Colored/Creole or that my mom, the lady in the 60s Wonder Bread commercial, wasn't white. But the scars still remain with all of us. The lies, the denial of self still haunt the family. I am sending this book to my mom who prbably to this day experiences some guilt about not raising her eldest daughter because she couldn't pass in her white expatriate world.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is the best book I've read in years. I heard about this book on Fresh Air on NPR, and Bliss's story is simply fascinating. This book touches on many sensitive, often unspoken taboos with respect to race. I plan to buy several copies to distribute to friends--it is both an interesting AND educational read.

This book is a page-turning nonfiction mystery, and Bliss Broyard does a fantastic job of bringing the reader with her on a journey into her family's past. Her book is an honest portrait of racism's roots in New Orleans and New York as well as its more recent incarnation in contemporary society, such as the tony Connecticut suburb in which Bliss Broyard was raised. This book is a very real portrait of Creole and New Orleans history. It even helped put Katrina into context for me.

This isn't the type of book I normally read. But if you like literary fiction, buy this. Bliss has a natural gift as a storyteller and it is a very raw, page-turning read. I am sure that whatever your racial or socio-economic background, this book will broaden your worldview and make you think twice about many subconscious racial judgments you make every day.

(BTW--I am white, grew up in the West/Northeast (NH), and consider myself liberal, if this helps you decide if you'd like this book as much as I did.)

Personal Observations on Bliss Broyard's
One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets
(New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2007)

Let me say right off that we at Backintyme Publishing enjoyed the book and recommend it without reservation. But do not be fooled by the misleading marketing blurb (more about this later); One Drop is not a book about a White woman who suddenly discovers that she is "really" Black. It is not about Bliss Broyard's father. It is not even about her search for her father's roots among the Louisiana Creoles. The book introspects Ms. Broyard's feelings about what she found while searching for those roots.

Anatole Broyard died in 1990 after an illustrious career as literary critic for the New York Times. He was one of the intellectual beacons of the U.S. twentieth century. Six years after his death, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., head of Black Studies at Harvard, published an essay "outing" the late Broyard as a Black man who had lived a lie by pretending to be White all his professional life. According to Bliss, she and her older brother Todd only learned about their father's Colored Creole ancestry shortly before his death when she was twenty-four. Apparently, it then took her over a decade to assemble the facts to refute Gates's racialist ignorance.

I lay my cards on the table. I am not objective about U.S. racialism. I am of a culture that is as proud of its African ancestry as of its European and Native American roots. (By coincidence, I happen to have the same fraction of sub-Saharan genetic admixture as Bliss.) I feel as at home among Creoles, Melungeons, Redbones, and Seminoles as I do among my own Puerto Rican people. I love seeing siblings accepted as routine, whom the newspapers would breathlessly report as "one chance in a million." But, like Anatole Broyard, I am not African-American, and I will dispute anyone who ignores my culture and accuses me of betraying my "race" merely because my genome is typical of New World inhabitants, as Gates did to Broyard after his death.

The overt villain of this book is Gates and he is essential to its existence. Had Gates never accused Broyard's corpse of being a race traitor, this book about Bliss's genealogical quest could not have been published. Had Gates never advised Bliss's mother that "the best thing she could do was to help [Bliss] accept her blackness," Bliss might not have resolved to learn the truth. Had Gates not suggested that they petition Connecticut to alter Bliss's birth certificate to show "black" ancestry, he might have seemed rational. As it is, you conclude that Gates is delusional--an honest believer in the false dichotomy of the U.S. color line: if you are not White, then you must be Black, like it or not. He apparently wants to infect others with his foolishness that any African ancestry makes you INVOLUNTARILY Black.* In short, we should all be grateful to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Without him, this excellent book would probably not exist.

The book answers two questions but leaves two others unanswered. First and most-often asked, did Anatole Broyard hide his Colored Creole ancestry? He did not. Did he cut off his children from their Creole roots? He did. Why? We shall never know. Did he deny being Black? That is a non-question with a false assumption.

The book also has a covert villain--Anatole Broyard himself. Although Bliss clearly loved her father and admires him, he comes across in this book as self-centered and demanding. Most of all, it is hard to forgive his cutting off his children from their Creole culture. Why would anyone deprive his own children of such a proud and colorful family?

The canonical answer is that he feared that they would be seen as Black and suffer prejudice. But that answer simply does not hold water. It is belied by Bliss's book. Anatole's wife, his friends, his business associates at work, his neighbors, some of Bliss's and Todd's little childhood friends, even the handymen who worked on his house, all knew of Broyard's ancestry. Judging by the book, the only two people on the planet who did not know that Anatole Broyard was of Colored Creole heritage were Bliss and Todd, and I have my doubts about Todd.

Obviously, there was a falling out with his relatives. Anatole never let his children meet their Creole relatives and, in turn, he was vindictively and explicitly excluded from his sister Lorraine's will. We shall probably never know what caused the rift. Nevertheless in the end, for whatever reason, he deprived his children of their rich cultural heritage.

The fourth question, whether he denied being African-American, is a non-question with a built-in false assumption. Why would anyone expect him to claim to be Black? He was not of the African-American ethnic community any more than are millions of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and tens of thousands of other Creoles, Lumbees, Melungeons, Redbones, etc. The world is far richer than those who preach White "racial" purity would have you believe. I would love to know how Anatole Broyard filled out census forms in 1960, 1970, 1980, and 1990. (According to Bliss in an NPR interview, she checked three "race" boxes in census 2000.)

Despite all this, the book is not about her father. It is about Ms. Broyard's own feelings towards what she learned while searching for her father's roots.

Evidently, when she was under Gates's influence Bliss believed his racialist silliness that if you have any African ancestry, you have no choice--you are Black. The first third of her book continually presents Black/White as an either/or choice with no other alternatives. Worse, she often repeats notorious racialist stereotypes. She attributes her skill at dancing and her father's love of sensuality to her "Black" ancestry, as if such traits are carried in the mythical "one drop." At one point she even expresses surprise that the dancers at a New Orleans Creole ball are no more graceful than any other random collection of middle-class Americans.

As she became exposed to the Creoles, Bliss Broyard began to learn of the existence of cultures of mixed Afro-Euro ancestry who are not ethnically Black. To my sensibilities, the funniest moment of the book is Bliss's horror at discovering that her Colored ancestors, far from being tragic slaves kidnapped into the middle passage, were powerful slave owners who immigrated from Haiti. (Half of the Colored residents of 1839 New Orleans owned slaves.) By the end of her journey, she apparently began intellectually to grasp that the bizarre U.S. one-drop rule is, well, dumb. Unfortunately, she never seems to absorb this new knowledge at an emotional level, and continues to use "Black" and "African ancestry" as synonyms to the very end.

Any molecular anthropologist can explain that as many as 30 percent of White Americans have detectable sub-Saharan DNA markers from slave ancestors who crossed the color line. (See "Afro-European Genetic Admixture in the United States" at http://backintyme.com/essays/?p=5 .) And it is easy enough to compute that about 35,000 European-looking Americans every year switch from calling themselves "Black" to "White" when they leave high school. (See "The Rate of Black-to-White 'Passing'" at http://backintyme.com/essays/?p=8 .) The good news is that this book will educate readers at a personal family level just how this happens. The bad news is that its author inadvertently reifies Americans' false dichotomy because she is apparently still struggling with the realization that mixed Afro-Euro-Native American ancestry is the norm in this hemisphere, and that the obviously counterfactual U.S. myth of White "racial" purity is the strange pathological exception.

The biggest flaw in the book is not in the author's writing, which is entertaining and informative. Its problem is lack of truth in advertising. It is marketed as another one of those tedious books whose theme is: "Oh woe is me! I thought that I was a rich White but it turns out I am really Black. Taxis no longer stop for me! Cops have started harassing me! What will I do?" (All this written by someone who, in the words of Zora Neale Hurston, is "white enough to suit Hitler and passing for colored.") In reality, this book is the story of the Louisiana Creoles who are many things, but "Black" (in the Harlem Renaissance sense) is not one of them. Nevertheless, the book is marketed thus.

Most reviewers repeat the theme: "White woman discovers that she is really Black." The NPR interviewer challenged, "so now you consider yourself `Black'?" (To which, Bliss replied, "Yes. I have mixed-race ancestry.") The first paragraph of her book-jacket bluntly affirms about her father, "he was black." Diane McWhorter's endorsement praises Ms. Broyard's "discovering that she is black."

It is not that such books lack a market. Many have been published in the past decade by Matthews, Williams, Piper, Kroeger, and others. They must be selling well, because new ones keep coming out (pun intended). The notion that a European-looking person discovers that he is "really Black" and that this suddenly makes taxi drivers ignore him (a claim actually made by an author in the online discussion group that Backintyme sponsors) seems to attract a certain kind of reader.

The problem is that, despite the book's own jacket, despite all the reviews, despite the interviews, this is not one of those books. It is not about a White woman who is "really" Black. Instead, it is a presentation of the history and culture of the Gulf Coast Creoles by someone who is one of them by ancestry, although cut off from them in childhood, and who is now desperate to learn about them and to share her discoveries with the rest of us.

And so, readers who are turned off by the false dichotomy of the color line will not even open this book. Those who consider the "I was a rich White but it turns out I am really Black" genre puerile will pass it by. Those who resent others shoehorning them involuntarily into an ethnic group will advise their friends to avoid it.

On the other hand, those who gloat over traditional passing-as-deception stories so loved by academia, and who smirk when the wicked passer gets her "just comeuppance" will read the blurb and buy the book but then be disappointed. They will claim false advertising and some will likely demand their money back.

In short, those who would enjoy this book (including millions of people of mixed ancestry) will be turned off by its marketing hype and not buy it. And those who believe its color-line-reifying blurb will buy it but be disappointed and warn their friends. This is a shame because it is an outstanding book and well worth the price. Perhaps these personal observations will help.

* * * * *

*Is it just me? Or does anyone else find it odd that the most highly respected and diligent protector of White "racial" purity today is a college Black Studies teacher?

There's a paragraph in ONE DROP where the author describes her brother's feelings about her search into their family history: "Despite Todd's encouragement of my own interest in our Creole history...I wondered at times if he viewed my compulsion to figure out my racial identity as perplexing, or even a little distasteful. It wasn't that I believed he was racist, any more than I was, but I thought that he didn't quite understand why I was always making such a big deal out of the 'black thing'."

As a reader, I'm with Todd (if that's what he really felt). The author feels Todd is stuck in a "familiar perspective" by not exploring "the black thing", like she's doing. Yet to me, Todd, acknowledging they come from an interesting family, with many different backgrounds, is simply comfortable in his skin; not needing a definitive, and no pun intended, black or white identity. And good for him. Aren't definitive racial identities -YOU are this, and YOU are that - the basis for Anatole Broyard's tragedy? Ms. Broyard on the other hand, may still be working on her comfort level. She remembers, to her dismay, making casual racist remarks in her past, but also writes this weird little aside when remembering Leroy, the black man whose company cleaned the Broyard house during her childhood ("yes, Leroy really was his name"). So what if his name was Leroy and he's black?

In general, Ms. Broyard's writing has the all the purposeful observation of someone who's making notes of personal conversations; who's keeping a daily journal; tallying who did what and to whom, and how it felt - but it's not, I don't know, fully or honestly experienced; absorbed, into the heart and mind? The tone of ONE DROP reflects the fact that, almost at the instant Ms. Broyard discovered her father's secret, she seized on it for a writing project. For all the historical background and the research into her genealogy; the travels around the U.S. and the descriptions of meetings with her relatives - again, I don't know, it's as if there's a performance going on - almost, if not quite, as if all the effort was anticipatory - was just "this will make a good moment for the book"- THAT kind of performance. It's not totally bad writing in the sense that it's unreadable, but there is a feeling of something counterfeit. I believe in Ms. Broyard's good intentions, but somehow I can't blame her aunt Shirley for keeping her distance at times. If I do Ms. Broyard an injustice, I apologize but quite frankly this is the way the book "reads" to me. When ONE DROP is focused on Anatole Broyard, his history, his life, it's absorbing, but when it's focused on Bliss Broyard, her feelings, it's - less so.

What I took away from this book is that Anatole Broyard was a conflicted and complicated man who made the decision to reject his immediate family and heritage - an essentially tragic decision that seems to have haunted him and probably prevented him from attaining the total success he craved as a writer. One has to wonder if the cancer that killed him at age 70 wasn't a product of grief; repressed anger and the strain of concealing a part of himself. It's a life story that deserves something more nuanced than this book can provide, although Ms. Broyard's research would make a good beginning for another biographer.

Bliss Broyard has constructed an admirable memoir about her upper-middle-rank-writer father, Anatole Broyard. Her angle is his chosen white life versus his (and, of course, her) partly black ancestry. Given the deep-rooted racism evident in this country up to and including the present, it seems impossible to find much fault with anyone on the color border who chooses to self-identify as white, but the author finds great issue with her father's choice.

Blacks have been ostracized, sidelined, humiliated, red-lined and lynched, rendering it utterly obvious why any person with mixed ancestry and a light skin would choose a white identity if offered. It is easy to argue that a light-skinned pure moralist would declare his blackness and fight for black rights, but that supposes that civic virtue trumps personal freedom.

While I admire the author for her thoroughgoing research, I am stumped about why she so urgently hoped to discover that she had slave forbears. Was she looking for a badge? Even as I appreciate her interest in reconnecting with her genealogical roots, I find myself wondering if some sort of white liberal guilt has forced her to do penance at the altar of her assumptions.

The book is well researched and provides a useful look at the origins of Creole culture, the odd frame in which New Orleans developed as a multinational city and the early years of Greenwich Village hipster culture. The author engages in thoughtful consideration of the black-white divide traversed by those whose skin color render the choice optional and explores some of the ways that such a choice affects familial and community ties.

But the innate assumptions of the author concerning such choices diminish the end product. There were moments during my reading when I considered placing the book in my "recommended" pile, but in the end I placed it on the towering stack of rejects.

At the end of the book Bliss admits that there is no scientific basis for race but the whole book makes it seem that having mixed blood makes one a pariah. Every human being originated in Africa but the stupid racial categories that persist today in America originated to perpetuate slavery and are bogus.

Barack Obama(Not in the book) is defined as a black man but his sister is Eurasian. How stupid is that? The Mountbatten family has an African ancestor but it is
proudly recorded and none of them walk around having African specific medical tests and have married into the British Royal family for over a hundred years.

Anatole made his life easier by living as a white man. It prevented him from being excluded from society when he was making his way in the world.All these people who felt he had to acknowledge 'what he was' missed what he really was, a human being who wanted to be liked and accepted.Had white society been broadminded enough this would not have been necessary.

In America race is paramount. It is impossible to talk about a black man without saying he is black and the vast majority of black Americans are viewed as unwelcome, lazy, stupid and dishonest. They all have stories about constantly having to prove themselves to their inferiors.
Every negative story that appears in the press never fails to show the black face in handcuffs.The black man will never be free unless he has the right to be wrong.

White America consciously or unconsciously punishes African Americans for slavery when in fact African Americans were the victims.The south is still smarting over a war that was shameful and wrong.

Bliss obviously enjoyed her quest on the dark side but it was quite pathetic how her own bias and racism came out unconsciously. I think her family recognized this by their lack of enthusiasm for her overtures for friendship. As for urging her blond brother to be tested for prostate cancer earlier (because of his black blood) was again genetically unsound and pathetic. Each time a human being is created, they are unique and carry the genes of ice age ancestors as well as recent ones. Variety is the spice of life.

The historical facts were interesting but Anatole did no more than millions of people, who conceal their humble origins in order to keep up with those who think they are superior. It was a sad sad indictment of those who exclude.

I enjoyed reading Broyard's book but afterward felt that she actually simplified her father's racial/cultural heritage. Her extensive research into the color spectrum of New Orleans' residents in pre- and post- Louisiana Purchase era was informative and well-presented. Her examination, throughout the book, of her father's "motives" for "passing" were simplistic and not fully formed. While she didn't shrink from presenting a full picture of her father, one of a selfish, demanding person, an unfaithful husband and a sometimes snappish parent, she seemed not to look at the full man in relation to his blood relatives. Her handwringing "who am I" exploration felt juvenile. Finally, in failing to fully explore why Anatole's sister Lorraine disinherited him, and why her Aunt Shirley (about whom Bliss was not too kind in the final pages) wasn't interesting in involving Bliss into her and her son's lives, she essentially did what she tried hard in the beginning not to do -kneejerk into focusing only on, and blaming, race. I felt that there was a more personal story here which, because her father and her Aunt Lorraine were dead, she couldn't fully explore but she failed to even consider. There have been many stories, nonfiction and fiction, of ambitious, smart young adults from Brooklyn and Queens crossing the rivers and leaving by choice their families behind, not inviting their siblings to their posh homes, not introducing their parents to their intellectual friends, having their own children and creating their own chosen families of friends. In failing to even consider these aspects of ambition trumping race, Bliss made the story soley about race.