Self-Portrait in Black and White

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

A TIME 'MUST-READ'

'An extraordinarily thought-provoking memoir that makes a controversial
contribution to the fraught debate on race and racism . . . intellectually
stimulating and compelling' SUNDAY TIMES

A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait
in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multi-
generational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be
white. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a 'black' father from the
segregated South and a 'white' mother from the West, spent his whole life
believing the dictum that a single drop of 'black blood' makes a person black.
This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously
reflected on its foundations - but the shock of his experience as the black
father of two extremely white-looking children led him to question these long-
held convictions.

It is not that he has come to believe that he is no longer black or that his
daughter is white, Williams notes. It is that these categories cannot
adequately capture either of them - or anyone else, for that matter.
Beautifully written and bound to upset received opinions on race, Self-
Portrait in Black and White is an urgent work for our time.