White Girl: A Story Of School Desegregation (Hardcover)

by Clara Silverstein (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Silverstein set out to tell a story about being the unlikely minority in a politically charged time. In some ways, she succeeds. Her memoir is a delicately told, detailed account of the humiliation she experienced as one of 10 white students in an otherwise all-black junior high school in the early 1970s in Richmond, Va. As if dealing with puberty and her own father's untimely death weren't enough, Silverstein was laughed at and shut down repeatedly, becoming, in effect, a desegregation martyr. Her educational experience highlights the inevitable growing pains that accompany any lofty political idealism. Importantly, Silverstein reveals that it wasn't just the black kids and families who suffered as the buses rolled. Unfortunately, while Silverstein readily retells her painful childhood one small moment at a time, she fails to get at the brutal truth of how this has affected the rest of her life. She hints at it when she admits, "No matter how I look or where I move, there is no escape from my past. My experiences are lodged inside me like splinters of glass." Yet she neglects to explore how the same painful minutiae played out in her later life as a result of those struggles so many years ago.
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Review
"A powerful memoir written with brutal honesty and uncompromising idealism." -- Southern Scribe October 2004

"A skilled, moving account of the Brown decision's fraught terrain...Silverstein was a brave, young soldier fighting an adult war." -- BookForum, October/November 2004

"Clara Silverstein has written an honest, balanced, and deeply personal memoir." -- Robert Pratt, author of We Shall Not Be Moved: The Desegregation of the University of Georgia

"Great insight into what may be viewed as "the other busing experience." -- Jewish Book World Winter 2004

"It's easy to feel Silverstein's anguish, but her message is that positive social change is possible." -- Library Journal September 1, 2004

"Sizes up integration well, both its vision and its pitfalls." -- Chautauqua Literary Journal 2005

"This wonderful memoir inverts our understanding of desegregation, reminding us that white students. . . were as heroic as their black counterparts." -- James S. Hirsch, author of Two Souls Indivisible

"When readers of Clara Silverstein's White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation put down this book, they will not feel good. They will, however, better understand the destructive and dangerous, as well as poignant and painful, impact that racism has had on both white and black Americans." -- Journal of Southern History, February 1, 2006

"White Girl is a fascinating memoir told from a perspective not often considered in histories of school integration." -- Jennifer Ritterhouse, coeditor of Remembering Jim Crow

"Wistful and evocative ... an important addition to the existing literature." -- Southern Jewish History 2005

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 149 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (September 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0820326623
• ISBN-13: 978-0820326627
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #699,514 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Different but equal, September 17, 2004

By	The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

WHITE GIRL: A Story of School Desegregation is a stirring and poignant
account of the upheaval surrounding court-ordered busing in the early
1970s. Like many students at the vanguard of this inevitable movement
to achieve school integration, sixth-grader Clara Silverstein faced
humiliation on a daily basis. She was spit on, tripped, and shoved by
her new schoolmates. This was a typical reaction to the majority of
the Black (the term of that era), children who were subject to this
law. But this fast-paced memoir inverts our understanding of
desegregation. Clara was white, one of the few white students in her
entire school. This is her story, a vivid description of a
controversial social experiment and an intimate chronicle of a young
girl's turbulent journey through adolescence.

Clara lived in Chicago and was very familiar with racial mixing. But
when the family relocated to Richmond, Virginia, after the death of
her father, her racial education escalated. She wonders how she
lived through several agitated situations: her first crush on a Black
classmate, naively wearing a jacket with a Confederate flag sewn on
to class, and surviving alone, when the other white classmates switched
to private schools.

Clara remained in the public schools and contends that if she learned
nothing else, she did come to understand the scourge of racism. Her
story is one that is usually lost in the historical accounts of busing,
and this fact motivated her to share her experience. Her story is woven
with in-depth historical details and several personal photographs. Some
thirty years later there are those who question the use of the school
system to create social change. This is a different view of this
racially motivated issue.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers