Customer Reviews

Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away

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I just finished reading this powerful book and dissolved into tears. It is so honest and personal an account of a life lived in two places, one black and one white and the inner struggles and outer slights that resulted from this displacement. It is also a love story of a white mother who couldn't keep her bi-racial daughter, didn't always understand the shoes that she walked in, but loved her the best way she knew how from afar. The author writes from such a deep place that anyone can identify with her, no matter what their background. The writing is moving, wonderful and well crafted, often poignant and gut wrenching. It is also a success story of someone putting back the pieces of a fragmented life torn with racial dissent and misunderstanding. But it will help you understand your world better and hers as well, so that it becomes one world- not hers, not yours, but all of ours. It is not filled with self pity, does not lecture, has wonderful show business and socially significant insights and will make you laugh cry and think. Anyone who reads this will be all the more richer as a human being for doing so.... I know I was!

June Cross first told her story in a PBS series tracing her black father's history. In this book, we get a more in depth look at the white mother who gave her away.

Truthfully, Norma, June's mother, didn't come off well in the television special. In the book, she comes across as more complex though the reader can't help but sometimes be annoyed by June's loyalty to her especially when she denies June is her daughter to rich and upper class friends in her famous husband's circles. This is compounded by June's failure to truly appreciate Peggy the woman who raised her. But Norma's decision to give away her daughter is almost understandable considering the racial attitudes towards interracial relationships in the 1950s.

The situation is further complicated when we learn Norma had two other white children who she neglected just as much as June. No matter how much the daughter tries, Norma is obviously self involved and an example that not every woman who gives birth is meant to be a mother.

The book is interesting reading and shows even famous people have complex family relationships.

Struggles between mothers and daughters have existed since the beginning of time. Add to that the issues of race barriers, ignorance, family and social pressures, and you find a moving memoir that you just can't put down.

Being a Mother to a bi-racial child, and having the fortune to see June Cross speak in-person regarding her experiences, I was drawn to purchase this book. June's story definitely pulls at the heart-strings. Its a wonderful example not only of a strong woman's journey to persevere through her personal struggles, but also her ability to bring her two, very different worlds, together.

In addition to the moving personal insights, June manages to bring a "tale of the times" into her book. Personal observations of the civil rights movement in America, from both sides of the fence, as well as pop-culture references, provide a unique historical view.

As a mom, it would be easy for me to judge Norma, June's biological Mother, for not having enough backbone to be the Mother she should have been. However June brings to light, the pieces of Norma's history that ultimately pave the way to her poor decisions. Regardless the negative circumstances, June and Norma manage to surmount the adversity and maintain a love for each other.

Truly a wonderful read.

Being biracial I was drawn to this book. The story was different. Cross was placed with a Black family by her mother, but her mother was still in her life. What was disturbing and shocking to me was how the mother continued to treat her daughter as a second class citizen way into Cross' adulthood. I could not get past that and kept thinking why is Cross even bothering with this woman. Nonetheless the book is interesting and worth reading.

The story was a compelling one and the overriding slant of the author's life is that she emerged relatively unscathed from it all - despite and in spite of her confusion and understandable bitterness whilst growing up. The story was peppered with very complex characters that would themselves have been equally interesting had their lives been explored further - Aunt Peggy and Yvonne come to mind. It is a great read, not in anyway sensationalized, just matter-of-factly relayed. Her anger although always in check, was understandable and justified. In all, Aunt Peggy and the extended family raised a wholesome human being. The book is highly recommended!

The book was well written and a good read. The snapshots of race relations and those involved in the Civil Rights movement were very interesting.

I was surprised at the lack of anger expressed by Ms. Cross and her brother, Lary. Their mother seemed very blase about having three children out of wedlock and then giving them all away. I would think the abandoned children would harbor lasting resentment toward their mother. They are better people than most.

In 1997 June Cross, a journalist, produced a documentary, Secret Daughter, with PBS Frontline about her life as a biracial daughter of a white woman and a black comedian. This was a poignant, difficult undertaking as Cross revealed how her mother, Norma Booth, for fear of jeopardizing her white husband's show business career coupled with her own insecurities about June's appearance, gave her daughter away to be raised by a middle-class black couple. This allowed June to be raised among "her people" in a safe, nurturing environment and kept Norma's former life a secret. Now in a revealing memoir, Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away, Cross chronicles in detail the circumstances surrounding her complex journey.

June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma, as aspiring actress and James Cross, a comedian of Stumpy & Stumpy fame. When Norma left June with Aunt Peggy and Uncle Paul, June assumed it was just for a short visit; it became an extended visit, an informal adoption for the childless couple. Even though she visited her mother in New York and later Los Angeles, she always returned to Aunt Peggy in Atlantic City, New Jersey. June's visits with her mother were of a schizophrenic nature; she was told to pose either as a niece, an adopted daughter, or a friend but never as Norma's birth daughter. Norma was ever fearful that if she were to reveal she had a black daughter, Larry Storch, her husband and a star of the television series, F Troop, and several movies, would lose roles. June was always in a state of confusion about her mother's denial of her existence.

Aunt Peggy, a school teacher, was close friends with the formidable Gregory family, a picture-perfect postcard for the Talented Tenth that Dubois endorsed. Accomplished, highly educated, strong standing in the community of Atlantic City, New Jersey, they were executives, scholars, and musicians; and fiercely proud of their black heritage. June lived in the shadow of these standards and then she would go to her mother's house and have to play another role. June's insulated black middle-class world became integrated in high school during a time of rebellion, black pride and afros. She began to embrace her natural hair and her Negroid features, the very thing that was a factor in Norma giving her up when she realized she could not pass June off as white. She was in constant battle with Aunt Peggy about appearances and impropriety, and who was acceptable to date and befriend. Aunt Peggy felt a career as a journalist would deter June from getting husband; she preferred she have a more "traditional" major.

I enjoyed learning about the black entertainment business of the 1940s and 50s; and to learn that Jimmy, June's father, who she only saw only once as a child after her parents separated until she was an adult, was considered a trailblazer. Jimmy's career was derailed by racism and alcoholism but his comedic style influenced comedians such as Jerry Lewis. I also appreciated learning about the history of a vibrant, African-American community in Atlantic City, which I had always thought of as a tourist, oceanside city.

I approached this book as being another tragic mulatto story, and while some elements fit the bill, I came away with respect for June Cross and the bravery it took to put the dynamics of her convoluted life out to be judged and dissected. Though I cannot help but still believe that Norma was a coward--even right up to the time of the documentary, in actuality it was probably the ultimate gift of love to her daughter to have given her to a black family as her own troubled background, and her inability to accept the complexity of raising a black child in a white world was beyond her capability. This book stands with the tomes of the best stories by children of mixed-race unions.

Dera R. Williams
APOOO BookClub

I loved this book and could not put it down!! I was born the same year in another part of the country. It was interesting to see how a cohort made sense of the same issues I tried to make sense of. The way she coped and healed would make any therapist proud and provides much healing for a family dealing with trauma forced by survival and coping with the predjudices of a society not willing to accept women or people of color "be all they could be."
Well written, insightful and candid.

A well written and moving memoir. An interesting look at a life against the backdrop of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Without giving away too much of her story let me say that it is fascinating to see how much society has changed since Ms. Cross's childhood. To have come through such challenges and to not only have survived but triumphed is a testament to the author's strength of character and a tribute to Aunt Peggy who raised her.

This memoir is a very interesting look into what it was like growing up for June Cross, daughter of aspiring white actress, Norma Booth, and well known black comedian, James "Stump" Cross. Secret Daughter delves into what is was like for a young June growing up, sometimes in two completely different worlds, and trying to find herself and more about herself and her parents. This novel takes us through June's adolescence and college years, on into adulthood and the present. June learns some lessons on her own, but is often persuaded to make choices other children or people do not have to make. Although June started out sometimes having to deny herself and even her kinships, I was happy to see that she fully accepts who she is now. I was happy June got all the answers she searched for for a lifetime, and especially the fact that she was able to reconcile her emotions with her mother and her father.