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

From Barnes & Noble

The title story in My Father, Dancing, Bliss Broyard's debut collection was a blatantly transparent tribute to her dying dad, famed New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard. In her memoir One Drop, she reveals the long-held family secret that she learned as he lay on his deathbed: "Your father's part black." This sudden revision of her ethnicity at first seemed a small matter, but eventually the news caused her to revisit her father's whole life and even search out the darker-skinned family members she never. Bliss's memoir approaches racial identity in an unexpected way, reminding us of issues that all too many of us think that we have left behind.

From the Publisher

Ever since renowned literary critic Anatole Broyard's own parents, New Orleans Creoles, had moved to Brooklyn and began to "pass" in order to get work, he had learned to conceal his racial identity. As he grew older and entered the ranks of the New York literary elite, he maintained the façade. Now his daughter Bliss tries to make sense of his choices and the impact of this revelation on her own life. She searches out the family she never knew in New York and New Orleans, and considers the profound consequences of racial identity. With unsparing candor and nuanced insight, Broyard chronicles her evolution from sheltered WASP to a woman of mixed race ancestry.

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