The Study of Racialism

ONE DROP
My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race & Family Secrets

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'd kept all their lives and most of his own: he was black. Born in the French Quarter in 1920, Anatole began to conceal his racial identity after the family moved from New Orleans to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and his parents resorted to "passing" in order to get work. From his bohemian days in the cafés of Greenwich Village in the 1940s to his ascension in the ranks of the literary elite, he continued to maintain the façade.

Serving as a daily book critic for the New York Times for more than a decade, and as a columnist and editor at the New York Times Book Review for several years after that, Anatole was an influential voice in American culture. To his children he was a charming and attentive father who had strived to raise his family in the lush enclaves of Connecticut and Martha's Vineyard, providing an upbringing far removed from his own childhood. But even as he lay dying, the truth was too difficult for him to admit, and it was finally their mother who told Bliss and Todd that their sheltered New England childhood had come at a price.

In her remarkable memoir, Bliss Broyard examines her father's choices and the impact of this revelation on her own life. Seeking out unknown relatives in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, she uncovers the 250- year history of her family in America, and chronicles her own evolution from privileged Wasp to a woman of mixed-race ancestry. The result is a beautifully crafted and touching portrait of her father, and a provocative examination of the profound consequences of racial identity.

NEWS

An excerpt from ONE DROP will appear in Elle Magazine's September issue, on the newstands in early August.

Bliss is scheduled to be interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. Check back for air times.

Watch Bliss on the PBS series African American Lives (hosted by Henry Louis Gates) in February, 2008.


EVENTS

New York, New York

Thursday, September 27th, 2007, 7:00 PM
Discussion and signing at Barnes & Noble Astor Place.

Houston, Texas

Sunday, October 21st, 2007, 5:30 PM
28th Annual Houston Chronicle Book and Author Dinner with Douglas Brinkley, Laura Lippman, and Jeffrey Toobin.

Oxford, Mississippi

Monday, October 22nd, 2007, 5:00 PM
Signing and Reception, 5:00 PM, Reading at 5:30 PM at Square Books.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 5:00 PM
Discussion and signing at the Garden District Bookshop.

Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Discussion and Signing in Metairie Borders Books.

Los Angeles, California

Thursday, November 1st, 2007
Discussion and Signing at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena.

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007, 5:00 PM
Reading and Signing at Book Soup in West Hollywood.

Yes it was their mother who told them that their father Anatole was part black.

Thank God people with white phenotypes don't have to hide their mixed race ancesrty if they don't want to.

If he never kept his Coloured Creole ancestry secret from his wife nor from his friends, then exactly who was he keeping it secret from?

I missed the part where his friends knew?

Milton Klonsky Knew that Broyard had black ancestry and he and Anatol Broyard were friends, Anatole told him.

Does One Drop ideology really create "victims" in the present day? If so, how?
What specifically is the demonstrable harm? Not 70 years ago. Today?

"Bliss Broyard’s account of discovering that she is black, after a childhood of unwittingly 'passing' at a tony prep school and a snooty yacht club, is among the most elegant and nuanced examinations of race I’ve encountered, an exquisite rendering of how color is simultaneously a meaningless abstraction and the all-pervasive marker of identity in America. One Drop transcends race, going to the essence of what it means simply to be."
--Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

Anatole didn't have the "color" and neither does Bliss. I've seen this many times before, where the alleged "passer" is described as hiding his true "color."

I recall a U.S. History seminar where the professor said, "a white-looking black person," and I chimed in with, "that is sort of like a short-looking tall person." Everybody stopped and looked at me as their brains processed the thought. A female student then exclaimed , "Yeah! and I am really thin inside. I just look fat!" The class broke up into waves of laughter. Sad to say, the professor never forgave me.

Constant media attacks because you choose to identify by an identity is not being a victim?

Liberal white Southern author Diane McWhorter's "praise" of Bliss Broyard's book is very disturbing. Note how she labels Bliss as "black" without knowing she is "black" and "passing" without knowing she is "passing" (invisible blackness to the max).

Notice how McWhorter also says "...color is simultaneously a meaningless abstraction and the all-pervasive marker of identity in America." What color? Anatole didn't have the "color" and neither does Bliss. I've seen this many times before, where the alleged "passer" is described as hiding his true "color."

http://blissbroyard.com/index.html

I recall a U.S. History seminar where the professor said, "a white-looking black person," and I chimed in with, "that is sort of like a short-looking tall person." Everybody stopped and looked at me as their brains processed the thought. A female student then exclaimed , "Yeah! and I am really thin inside. I just look fat!" The class broke up into waves of laughter. Sad to say, the professor never forgave me.

However, remember that it is only recently that Americans have once again acquired a vocabulary to express racial mixture (thanks to the Multiracial Movement).