Vanessa Willoughby

NonfictionBiography

The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

The American dream has always been conditional for this country’s marginalized peoples. For young, undocumented Mexican mother Aida Hernandez (not her real name, for reasons of protective anonymity), the U.S. immigration system exposed the cruelties and complexities of what it really means to be free.

Aida was born and raised in Agua Prieta, Mexico. After her mother endured years of physical abuse, she left her husband, Aida’s father, and set out for the border town of Douglas, Arizona, with 9-year-old Aida and her two other daughters in tow. But Aida’s mother’s next partner echoed the patterns of abuse. As Aida grew up, the turbulent and unpredictable nature of her mother’s relationships added to the micro and macro challenges that accompanied living as an undocumented citizen. As a result, Aida’s inner world reflected the chaos of her unstable adolescence.

Author Aaron Bobrow-Strain, a professor of politics at Whitman College and the founding member of the Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition in Washington state, presents Aida’s narrative in The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez as “somewhere between journalistic nonfiction and ethnography.” Bobrow-Strain’s genre-bending book isn’t so much an example of immigrant “exceptionalism”—the idea that Aida is deserving of citizenship because she’s “not like the others”—as it is an example of how American cultural and societal norms frame immigration as a meritocracy. 

In the book’s extensive back matter, Bobrow-Strain writes, “By framing support for undocumented immigrants in the language of virtue and achievement—‘hardworking,’ ‘family values,’ ‘not criminals,’ and ‘success stories’—I, and some parts of the immigrant rights movement, had tacitly condemned people like Aida who could not fit their lives into our narrow windows of approval.”

The author’s tone, coupled with the overall narrative execution, shakes off the objective lens typically required of straightforward journalism. Bobrow-Strain is equal parts sympathetic and unabashedly honest in his re-creation of Aida’s life, seamlessly blending the intimate details of memoir into the historical and political context of U.S. immigration policies. Her journey to young adulthood is marked both by its universality (dancing to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, the anxieties of trying to fit in at school) and by the adversities specific to being “other” in America (dealing with undocumented citizenship status, Border Patrol).

While Aida’s story is not meant to serve as the sole representation of life as an undocumented immigrant, it’s a sharp portrait of a country where equality is designed only for those deemed worthy. 

The American dream has always been conditional for this country’s marginalized peoples. For young, undocumented Mexican mother Aida Hernandez (not her real name, for reasons of protective anonymity), the U.S. immigration system exposed the cruelties and complexities of what it really means to be free.

NonfictionSocial Science

It Was All a Dream

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

With the election of President Obama in 2009, many young black men and women saw hope in the promise of the American dream—the belief that hard work and unrelenting persistence guaranteed a seat at the table. But as the years passed, the envisioned path of upward mobility proved impassable. And yet, the reality of the lives of black millennials in a post-Obama nation isn’t a portrait of total despair. For Reniqua Allen, Eisner Fellow at the Nation Institute, the demystifying of the American dream represents a chance to abandon the expectations of white America and forge a new path. It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America is a portrait of young black people grappling with the enduring legacy of white supremacy. Combining nuanced reporting with the intimacies of personal experience, Allen showcases the lives of black millennials, which are rarely portrayed with accuracy in mainstream media.

Gathering the stories of more than 75 black Americans living everywhere from sprawling cities to contained suburbs, Allen dismantles the conditional terms of a lie that has been peddled for decades. The American dream says that the road to success is built upon meritocracy, but black millennials soon discovered that education alone couldn’t fully shatter institutional racism and systemic discrimination. Allen shares the experience of Michael, a former college athlete with a crippling amount of undergraduate student debt. Like many of his peers, Michael did everything “right.” But Michael lost his athletic scholarship due to injury before graduation. He was determined to finish his education, despite the mounting debt. Although he doesn’t consider his experience “a sob story,” it’s in line with the stories of many black Americans who followed the rules put in place by white America.

In this insightful book, the idea of the American dream is proven to be a fairy tale at best, and a nightmare at worst.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With the election of President Obama in 2009, many young black men and women saw hope in the promise of the American dream—the belief that hard work and unrelenting persistence guaranteed a seat at the table. But as the years passed, the envisioned path of upward mobility proved impassable. And yet, the reality of the lives of black millennials in a post-Obama nation isn’t a portrait of total despair. For Reniqua Allen, Eisner Fellow at the Nation Institute, the demystifying of the American dream represents a chance to abandon the expectations of white America and forge a new path. It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America is a portrait of young black people grappling with the enduring legacy of white supremacy. Combining nuanced reporting with the intimacies of personal experience, Allen showcases the lives of black millennials, which are rarely portrayed with accuracy in mainstream media.

NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

The War Before the War

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

The general consensus about the origins of the Civil War point to one irrevocable catalyst: the institution of slavery in the South. With fine-combed research, Andrew Delbanco, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and 2012 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, argues that the Fugitive Slave Act was the centralized fuse that sparked the Civil War in The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War.

The practice of slavery was threaded into American life from the United States’ inception. Following the end of the Revolutionary War, leaders in the colonies, including General George Washington, were concerned that Tories leaving the country would take fugitive slaves with them to freedom. Washington himself called for aid in locating his runaway slaves, unknowingly foreshadowing the Fugitive Slave Act.

By the time Lincoln became president, congressional attempts to appease opposing sides on the slavery issue had carved a path toward implosion, culminating in an attempt at uniting a fissured nation that utterly failed: the Compromise of 1850. Its inclusion of the Fugitive Slave Act, which decreed that fugitive slaves must be returned to their master even if they had reached a free state, was the divisive match that lit the powder keg.

As Delbanco convincingly argues, the Fugitive Slave Act not only put a microscope on America’s fractured moral psyche, but its consequences seem to have echoed into the current political and social landscape. Racism, simultaneously an agent of white supremacy and a symptom, routinely shapes national policies and national identity. Ultimately, the Fugitive Slave Act was not a salve for the deepening fissures in the country’s conscience, but a reflection of America’s inability to grapple with its moral ambiguities. In the hands of an author strictly committed to objective, hard-nosed facts, The War Before the War would read as coldly authoritative and dry. Yet Delbanco treats his subject matter as a historical artifact, a sprawling puzzle and psychological case study, viewing America’s past acts as a troublesome blueprint for America’s present and possibly its future.

The general consensus about the origins of the Civil War point to one irrevocable catalyst: the institution of slavery in the South. Although some would argue that the founding of the United States technically did not depend upon the issue of slavery, the practice had already been threaded into American life by the United States’ inception. With fine-combed research, Andrew Delblanco, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and 2012 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, argues that the Fugitive Slave Act as the centralized fuse that sparked the Civil War.
NonfictionWomen's HistorySocial Science

Rage Becomes Her

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

Under the rules of the patriarchy, an angry woman is a more than a minor inconvenience: She is a problem. When a woman expresses her anger, she betrays the parameters of femininity imposed by a society that views men as humans and women as passive objects. Our society still operates on tired gender roles and misogynistic stereotypes that routinely silence, shame and demean women. Anger is regarded as a positive trait when associated with masculinity, yet it is simultaneously seen as the antithesis of what is acceptable behavior for women.

In the age of the #MeToo movement, the concept of recognizing and validating women’s anger has reached a palpable sense of urgency. For too long, women have been told that they should not only regulate their emotions but bury them while society encourages men to disregard emotion in favor of physical aggression. Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger is part cultural analysis and part call to arms. Chemaly—an award-winning author, activist and the Director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project—writes with clear-eyed conviction. Using an arresting combination of personal anecdotes, interviews and heavily researched data, Chemaly argues that women should reclaim their anger. She acknowledges that this process varies between women of different races, namely the ways in which white women can weaponize their privilege and anger against black women. While white women are routinely treated as “fragile” and “delicate” damsels in distress (see “Missing White Woman Syndrome”), black women’s anger is pathologized as dangerous, volatile—even criminal.

Nevertheless, women have historically been forced to undertake immense emotional labor that comes at the expense of their mental, emotional and physical health. For Chemaly, a liberated woman is one who can freely find strength in her rage.

Using an arresting combination of personal anecdotes, interviews and heavily researched data, Soraya Chemaly argues that women should reclaim their anger.
NonfictionSocial Science

A crisis caused by a thousand cuts

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

Make no mistake: The water crisis that has plagued the people of Flint, Michigan, is not the result of a single decision. Rather, it is the disastrous culmination of state government dysfunction, decades of enforced housing segregation and the meteoric rise and fall of the American automobile industry.

In April of 2014, Flint residents discovered that the water pouring from their faucets was not only undrinkable but also downright toxic. Due to a recent switch in the city’s water supply, Flint’s lead pipes corroded. Initial reports from horrified Flint citizens were largely ignored. By the time the state of Michigan admitted to its mistake, 12 people had died and Flint’s children had been exposed to irrevocable harm. Anna Clark, a journalist and regular contributor to the Detroit Free Press, recounts the tangled series of events that eventually led to the city’s poisoned water supply in The Poisoned City. Clark avoids sanctimonious judgments, but she isn’t afraid to painstakingly show how racism and state-sanctioned white supremacy shaped the socioeconomic policies of Flint.

Flint’s water crisis extends beyond an environmental disaster; it’s a public health and civil rights issue. In a way, it was by design that Flint’s communities of color were hit hardest. Unfortunately, the narrative surrounding Flint’s poisoned water is not an anomaly. For Clark, it’s a reflection of America’s tradition of inequality—the nation’s foundations are structured at the expense of the vulnerable and marginalized. Ultimately, the story of Flint’s water crisis echoes throughout countless American cities.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Make no mistake: The water crisis that has plagued the people of Flint, Michigan, is not the result of a single decision. Rather, it is the disastrous culmination of state government dysfunction, decades of enforced housing segregation and the meteoric rise and fall of the American automobile industry.

NonfictionMemoir

Step into the ring

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

The threat of mortality has a peculiar way of amplifying a person’s regrets. The Electric Woman, an honest and emotionally vulnerable memoir by Tessa Fontaine, chronicles the author’s relationship with her mother, who suffered a massive stroke that left her a shadow of her former self.

Inspired by her mother’s lust for life, Fontaine decides to challenge herself and conquer her fears. She says of her mother, “She’s a yes person, a woman of adventure. When I begin to doubt that I can pull this off, I stop and think of her.” On a whim, the author accepts an invitation to join a traveling circus. Although she essentially bluffs her way into a job, Fontaine quickly finds herself fully immersed in the rag-tag carnival lifestyle. She is drawn to this world of illusions and the carnival workers’ ability to seamlessly transform onstage. Fontaine takes up the acts of escape artist, snake charmer and “Electric Woman,” an act during which she lights bulbs with her tongue.

Fontaine partially frames her memoir as an anthropological investigation. She is a stranger in a strange land, observing the various characters that comprise the circus. Yet despite her misgivings, she finds a genuine camaraderie with her carnival co-workers. Throughout the circus narrative, Fontaine soberly recounts hospital visits with her mother in the Bay Area, her obvious love for her mother permeating each interaction like perfume.

In this memoir that seamlessly balances grief, loss and wild-eyed determination, Fontaine makes a compelling case for using fear as an unexpected gift.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The threat of mortality has a peculiar way of amplifying a person’s regrets. The Electric Woman, an honest and emotionally vulnerable memoir by Tessa Fontaine, chronicles the author’s relationship with her mother, who suffered a massive stroke that left her a shadow of her former self.

NonfictionMemoir

Sanity unraveled

Review by Vanessa Willoughby

The mind is a precious thing to lose. Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, learned this terrifying truth firsthand. In January of 2015, a melanoma diagnosis turned her once nimble mind into a war zone. With alarming quickness, the metastatic melanoma in Lipska’s brain attacked her frontal lobe, the area of the brain responsible for behavior, personality, learning and voluntary movement. She began to transform into a distant stranger, experiencing symptoms that mimicked dementia and schizophrenia. Friends and family members wondered if this new version of their beloved mother, wife, friend and colleague would permanently replace the woman they once knew. Lipska waged a tough battle against her faulty brain, and remarkably, through radiation and immunotherapy, she recovered.

As a medical professional whose career revolves around analyzing the molecular and genetic structure of the brain, it seems a cruel trick of fate that Lipska was struck by a disease that affected her own brain function. In The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, Lipska recounts her ordeal with equal parts raw honesty and clear-eyed conviction. Her brush with death changed her physically, mentally and emotionally, and lead to a realization that the tragedy of an unlived life should be feared more than death itself. Lipska writes, “I’ve become more aware of living. I try harder than ever to find meaning in ordinary things every day.” While this sentiment could seem trite in other memoirs, Lipska avoids sentimentality and doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that her descent into “madness” resulted in collateral damage among her loved ones; she was somewhat safe in the eye of the storm.

Lipska’s memoir makes clear that, in many ways, our brains are still a mystery.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The mind is a precious thing to lose. Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, learned this terrifying truth firsthand.

LiteratureEssaysBlack History

Emily Bernard

Interview by Vanessa Willoughby

Author, professor and academic Emily Bernard answers questions about storytelling, her writing process and the real-life experiences behind the essays in her latest collection, Black Is the Body.

In your introduction to Black Is the Body, you quote the author Zora Neale Hurston. Did her artistic legacy inform or shape the overall narrative of your collection? And if not, who are some of the writers that helped solidify your vision?
Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, excited and inspired me when I first read them many years ago. Throughout her career, Hurston was writing against the grain and defying expectations of what a woman writer—what a woman in general—was supposed to be doing. Their Eyes Were Watching God looks like a love story, but it is really about a woman learning to tell the story of her life. I read it when I was very young, and the deep lesson of that book didn’t occur to me until much later. I didn’t realize how much and how precisely Their Eyes had influenced me and shaped what I was going for in my own book until almost the very end of writing the final draft. What I love about Zora Neale Hurston is her ability and willingness to surprise, which is something she does a lot in her autobiography. Good writing, I think, should surprise the reader. When we get what we expect, we don’t have a chance to consider life in a different way, which is what all meaningful stories should enable us to do.

As both a writer and a reader, how does the act of storytelling provide freedom or resolution from trauma—both personal and generational?
As a child, I watched my mother, who was a poet, use writing as a way to remember, understand and master the past. For me, writing is freedom. Freedom from pain, rage and memories that haunt me. Writing enables me to discover resources of strength that I didn’t even know I had.

I don’t believe that storytelling really provides relief from trauma. I used to think it did. I actually thought writing “Scar Tissue” would dilute, if not completely obliterate, the trauma that I describe in the essay. Years after its publication, however, I was in yet another emergency room facing down another bout of adhesions in my bowel. It had been 10 years since the last hospitalization; I truly thought that I had written myself well. I was wrong. So, I no longer think that writing can provide absolute liberation from pain. What it can do is enable a person to learn to live with pain and transform it into something meaningful.

In the essay “Scar Tissue,” you write, “If my story is about pain, it’s also about rage. Rage is a physical condition.” How does rage, in the aftermath of a tragedy or violent situation, form a lasting scar in either the physical or emotional sense?
Rage is a symptom of helplessness. It’s normal, it’s predictable, it’s human, but it’s not productive in the long run. It can overtake you if you’re not careful and corrode you to the core. Rage helped guide me to the writing of “Scar Tissue,” it’s true. But in the end, I consider the essay a kind of love letter to the entire experience of being a victim of random violence. It is my attempt to honor the rage and offer it a civilized, humane place to live. Writing is a means of confronting rage with love.

Many of your essays touch upon pain—what it means to sit with it and also deal with it head-on. If pain can be weaponized against a victim, how can it be used as a tool on behalf of the victim to seek justice?
One thing I wanted to explore over the course of writing this book is how pain can be utilized, maybe not so much in a search for justice (which is ultimately so subjective) but in a search for truth. As for me, I was satisfied with what happened to the man who stabbed me, but I know that other victims felt that he should have suffered more. Personally, I felt acutely aware that there would never be true vindication because the damage caused by his knife could never be corrected, not really. I did not feel triumphant at his sentencing; I did not feel angry at him. I still don’t. He was sick; 25 years later, that still feels to me like the beginning and the end of the part of the story that involves him. My own pain is my own story. Ultimately, the degree to which it defines me is something I cannot control. Above all, I believe it is important not to let pain shame or silence you.

Your essay “Teaching the N-Word” is a powerful recollection of your attempts to get your all-white honors class at the University of Vermont to say the word in question and the complicated social politics surrounding the word. When responding to Sarah, a student who refuses to say the word, you tell the class, “I’d just like to remind you all that just because a person refuses to say ‘nigger,’ that doesn’t mean that person is not racist.” How does the concept of “wokeness” or “being woke”  contribute to racial politics? What does it reveal about our current political landscape and the way in which America handles race?
I am suspicious of handy terms like “woke” which, like “diversity,” looks like an answer to a problem—the problem of racism—when in fact there is no easy solution. Racism is durable; like a cancer, it adapts to its environment and changes shape over time. Language can’t cure a sickness; racism won’t be eradicated by a term like woke or any term at all. I like that the term has gotten people to aspire to be alive to the problem, but I think there is a huge possibility that becoming fluent in the language of wokeness can lead a person to a sense of self-satisfaction that does nothing toward actual social justice. In so far as wokeness seems to suggest a state of being, it is the polar opposite of action, which is the only way change can be achieved. True and lasting change happens incrementally, through the mundane, puny choices that we make every day.

“Teaching the N-Word” is a study in ambivalence, which is why I tell it in fragments. The spaces in between the episodes are there to give the reader room to imagine and insert their own experiences. Even though the books and articles I bring into class make it impossible to ignore the “n-word,” I am impressed by the students who have a philosophy about why they won’t say it, Sarah in particular. It looks like I want the students to say the word out loud, and maybe I do, but I desperately do not want them to do that at the same time. So much is going on inside of me that I cannot share with the class because I worry it will conflict with the linear aim of teaching, which is to make sure my students have something concrete to take away at the end of class. In my writing, I feel free to tell stories rather than give lectures. Readers will use them how they see fit.

In the essay “Interstates,” food is mentioned as both a way to access familial memories and a way to unite people across different cultures. If there was one dish specific to your family that represents you, what would it be? Why?
I am a little sheepish about answering this question since I still don’t cook well. When I do cook, I wind up serving meals that have no personality. I don’t as much make meals as put a bunch of different ingredients together. Despite my distant relationship with cooking, it is in kitchens and around dining tables that I have experienced heartiest and most intimate relationships of my life. I miss my mother every day, but most piercingly around the holidays. I miss her Thanksgivings; I miss watching her prepare squash casserole with onions and sour cream, and green beans with bacon and almonds. For New Year’s Eve, she would create the Caribbean meals my father grew up with, like ambrosia with Cool Whip and souse, which is pickled pig’s feet. These days, my daughters and I agree that my husband’s broccoli cavatelli brings us all to the table faster than any other meal he prepares for us.

A combination of guilt and stubbornness sends me back to the kitchen periodically, despite my culinary insecurities. The problem is, when I get close to mastering a dish, my husband comes around with his kitchen magic and turns it into something a million times better than what I could come up with.

The title essay, “Black Is the Body,” begins with the line, “My brown daughters became black when they were six years old.” Can you tell me a bit more about what that line means to you? Looking back at your own personal history, was there ever a similar moment for you?
That line captures, for me, what it means to raise my daughters and witness the profound and yet utterly mundane process of their growing up. Writing that essay was a way of accounting for the experience of watching them truly become their own people, making sense of the world in their own language. Eavesdropping as they revealed to each other their growing understanding of what race meant left me feeling exhilarated and sad at the same time. I felt I hadn’t done my job to guide them into the world of race. I had left them to figure it out on their own. But the lessons my elders tried to share with me during my childhood I rejected out of hand immediately, if only because I didn’t want to be told how to understand myself; it was as if they were trying to tell me how to feel about my own body. In the end, in not doing my job maybe I’ve done my job, at least as I see it, which is to allow them the space to define themselves.

The essay “Her Glory” discusses the politics of black hair and what it means to have so-called “good hair.” How does the concept of “good hair” relate to respectability politics and the policing of the black, female body?
It floors me, how many stories are contained on the tops of our heads, particularly when it comes to women, and even more particularly for black women. “Good hair” is a shorthand that I try to avoid using because of the way that it seems to condone an unforgiving standard of beauty. It is a concept that menaced me during my adolescence, another way I knew my body was being evaluated by others. Regrettably, as I got older, I started to make direct connections between the way I put my hair together and the way I thought others would perceive me as a black woman. I’ve recently begun getting my hair braided in cornrows, and it’s a completely liberating experience, more than I expected it to be. For me, it’s a way of turning my back of the burden of respectability politicking.

How do you practice the concept of self-care as a black woman, a writer and an academic?
I think I’m pretty bad at self-care, and I admire others who practice it well. I tend to run headlong into scary things, the same way I do in “Scar Tissue.” I can’t seem to help myself. It is the goal of my life to find a balance, to practice recklessness in a smart and safe way. Writing allows me to lean into fear and pain in a way that is productive and enriching, not only for myself but for other people, or at least I hope so.

What is one major misconception about being a writer that you wish people would understand?
There is no magic to writing, only labor. Well, there’s always magic involved in anything that comes about as the result of love, but just like true love, there are no shortcuts on the road to good writing. It takes time.

Writing is rewriting. It’s a simple lesson, and it’s a lesson that I have to keep relearning every time to sit down to write anything. It is only after I get sentences down on the page that a story begins to emerge, and only then after I’ve made my way through multiple drafts. For me, the terror and anguish that accompany almost every writing effort diminish only after I’ve put in the work. The good news is that if you stick with it, the labor itself can turn out to be the most satisfying part of all.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Black Is the Body.

Author photo by Stephanie Seguino

Author, professor and academic Emily Bernard answers questions about storytelling, her writing process and the real-life experiences behind the essays in her latest collection, Black Is the Body.

NonfictionMemoir

Nefertiti Austin

Interview by Vanessa Willoughby

What comes to mind when you picture a mother? For many people, the concept of motherhood, and by extension of a family, is associated with whiteness. We spoke with Nefertiti Austin about her memoir, Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America, the reality of Black women looking to publicly adopt and how she settled into her identity as a Black mother without appeasing societal or cultural expectations.

Your book discusses not only your personal experience of becoming a single parent but the absence of positive representation of Black motherhood. How can Black motherhood be a radical act?

The fact that Black women continue to pursue motherhood despite our history in America is definitely a radical act. Brought here in chains, we were property and so were our children, but we persevered. Even when we were denied access to our kids or forced to nurse and nurture white children, we created a village of grandparents, elders, siblings, neighbors and friends who became family to keep our kids safe. At every juncture, we have laid claim to our offspring, whether or not we gave birth to them, knowing that slavery, segregation, discrimination, criminalization, sexism, homophobia, racism and erasure are no match for a Black mom’s love. 

 

What is the most surprising thing you learned about yourself while on the journey to adopt your son, August? How was this self-revelation different from your experience adopting your daughter, Cherish?

Before becoming a mother, I never considered giving up my free-spirited ways. I was accustomed to coming and going as I pleased, but once the decision to adopt took hold, I realized that I was ready for a more routine-driven existence. Overnight, my life expanded to include carpool, sports and family time; and I was good with that. When my daughter came along, she easily blended into the mix.

 

One of Toni Morrison’s many nuggets of wisdom includes the quote, “The very serious function of racism . . . is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” How do racism and, by extension, the white gaze prevent Black mothers from simply being mothers?

Though Black motherhood has often been diminished, we are still mothers. Racism makes our jobs harder because it adds another layer of stress and worry about the emotional and physical safety of our children, but it doesn’t stop us from teaching our kids to tie their shoes. We are primarily focused on loving and caring for our families and less concerned with the white gaze, unless it interferes with their welfare. Then, you will hear from us.

 

What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir? Did having a blog make it easier to assemble and write a full-length book?

The most challenging part of writing my memoir was being vulnerable. In order to share my story and convey the sensitivity that I feel as a Black mother raising Black children in America, I had to shed layers. I had to remove my academic hat and be open to divulge how I felt different from my peers as a child, to discuss my father’s persistent incarceration and accept that I didn’t know my mother in an intimate sense.

I definitely thought my now-defunct blog, Mommiejonesing, would make writing my memoir a breeze. I had assembled a lot of articles written by others and myself on the subject of race, motherhood and adoption. I was armed with information but no feelings beyond outrage and disgust. Plus, I was writing from a distance, and that would have kept the reader from understanding the problem of erasing Black mothers from the parenting canon. In the end, much of what I blogged about did not make it into the book.

 

Your book opens with you taking 5-year-old August to a Black Lives Matter rally. You discuss the very real mixture of fear and anxiety that comes with being a mother to a young Black boy in America. How does white privilege contribute to and sustain the accelerated loss of innocence for Black children?

White privilege gifts white children with a shield that blots out the ugliness of the world. They get to be kids, where mistakes are encouraged and then forgiven. They get to live moment to moment without fear that someone hates/fears/despises them because of their race. This is the power of white privilege.

Simultaneously, Black parents do not have the luxury of not teaching our children about the perniciousness of racism and how, despite best efforts, microagressions and random acts of discrimination will come their way. Our children learn to code switch (act one way with us and another way with whites) and what to do if detained by the police or surveilled by merchants—early. These lessons—i.e., innocence-snatchers—occur as early as 5 years old, because white privilege perpetuates a system with the deck stacked against us. These are our gifts to Black children to keep them safe.

 

In the chapter “Building My Village,” you write, “It had never occurred to me that there was an expectation for little boys to adhere to a specific masculine salutation.” How does the myth of Black hypermasculinity work in conjunction with toxic masculinity? And how can it finally become obsolete?

Personal and emotional safety is a huge issue in our community. Showing fear can be death in some spaces, so emotion or affection between men is not promoted. However, expecting boys to remain in a man box, where not showing emotion or admitting to hurt and acting like nothing touches them, is heralded as masculine and is extremely problematic. It is toxic and a recipe for a shortened life, troubled relationships and mental illness. Plus, it plays into the stereotype of the hypermasculine Black man who needs to be put down by force. We saw this in the case of Rodney King.

As long as systemic racism, mass incarceration, gangs, drugs, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, poor health, undiagnosed PTSD and undereducation prevail where the opposite is true for their white counterparts, Black toxic masculinity isn’t going anywhere.

 

One of the most pervasive stereotypes about Black women is the “Strong Black Woman.” In the chapter “Got My Sea Legs,” you say, “More than one friend commented that I made parenting look easy, but part of the reason I was exploring on my blog how Black women were faring as mothers was because I was feeling the weight of trying to do everything myself.” For Black mothers, especially single Black mothers, how is there power in the decision to be vulnerable?

Self-care is empowering, and we have to give ourselves permission to ask for help. We are so used to doing everything ourselves that we don’t know how to ask for help or we think that being vulnerable is a sign of weakness or admission that single motherhood was a mistake. So we put pressure on ourselves to just handle things and succumb to the societal pressure of being all things to everybody. Most women, regardless of race, take care of the children, elders and work. It’s too much, and the reality is that Black women’s mental and physical health are taking a nosedive. Heart attacks, autoimmune diseases, cancer, obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes are taking their toll on us in a big way. We suffer when we don’t take care of ourselves or each other.

 

How can a sense of community benefit adoptive parents? How does it shape the identity of a foster or adopted child?

Adoption communities offer a safe space for families and children. Here, we do not need to prepare an explanation for why we chose adoption. It is understood that we wanted to become parents and viewed adoption as a natural path to achieve that goal.

Kids who spend time with other kids who are adopted see their experience as normal. Among kindred spirits, they can safely share how it feels to be the only adopted child in their class, or how they met their first parents and it went well or didn’t go well. In these spaces, they do not carry the burden of explaining why they don’t look like their (adoptive) parents or why they do look like their parents but are adopted. It frees them to enjoy life as part of a special club.

 

How do you think the definition of a family has changed in recent years? How has the idea of a “traditional” family excluded marginalized people, especially single Black mothers?

Modern American women are free to define and create family on their terms. We have moved away from believing that a nuclear family—father, mother, 2.5 kids and a dog—is the only way to be a family. Women are less likely to be shamed for having a job or wanting to stay at home with their children. The definition of family has even expanded to include single moms, adoptive families, LGBTQIA family configurations, kinship family dynamics and mixed-raced couples.

Depending on the socioeconomics of a community, sometimes the traditional paradigm of a family was not modeled or available due to poverty, racism, incarceration, unemployment, homelessness, etc. Also, many Black families are multigenerational, with grandparents or other relatives on hand to support the entire household. Our nontraditional familial configurations deem us marginal by mainstream standards, even when we do not.

In the case of white women willing to go it alone and bring a child into the world without a partner, she is often described as badass in mainstream culture. This nod to the independence of white women does not always extend to poor women or women of color. The reason is simple. Black mothers exist at the bottom of the racialized motherhood totem pole, as we are still saddled with negative stereotypes if we’re thought of at all. There are obvious exceptions—Michelle Obama and Serena Williams come to mind—but these ladies are married and have the means to provide stable homes for their families. Single Black women who pursue nontraditional paths to parenthood receive a side-eye from Blacks and whites. It is assumed that homes headed by single Black mothers are poorer, less intellectually stimulating and a breeding ground for children who are prone to delinquency. This racist characterization of single Black mothers suggests that our kids don’t stand a chance.   

 

What has been your favorite Mother’s Day to date?

Mother’s Day 2014 was my hands down favorite because it was the first Mother’s Day I had with both kids. Their godfather and a close friend made brunch: salmon croquettes and waffles, two things I don’t normally eat. No one bothered to ask if I liked either dish, but the effort let me know that I was appreciated.

 

What has been the best piece of advice you’ve received? On the flip side, what has been the worst, and if applicable, how has it revealed the conscious and/or unconscious racial bias of the speaker?

The best advice I have received is to put my oxygen mask on first. Self-care is critical to my being the best mother possible, and every day I strive to make myself a priority.

The worst advice was that my future baby from the foster care system would be a “crack” baby. The speaker believed the 1990s media frenzy about how the first parents who used crack cocaine would produce babies who would not thrive, would be sickly, would have physical and developmental delays and grow up to be criminals. Of course, this was nonsense, and research later confirmed that foster children who were drug exposed and then placed in stable homes showed no academic or developmental differences by third grade. It all came down to children having a safe, loving and stable home environment. Sadly, this bad advice was not a function of racist unconscious basis but media-sponsored fear and misinformation run amok.

 

If you could go back and do one thing differently during your adoption journey, would you? And if so, what would it be and why?

My adoption journey had peaks and valleys, but the outcome was two healthy, sweet children. I wouldn’t change a thing.

 

How do you think the foster and adoptive system can be improved in the U.S.?

One way to improve the foster and adoptive system is to hire additional social workers and reduce their caseloads. Smaller caseloads would serve three purposes: (1) individualized support for first parents, who often unconsciously repeat their own cycles of abuse and neglect and lose custody of their children; (2) better screenings for prospective foster/adoptive parents when family reunification is no longer feasible; and (3) the ability for social workers to really bond with children on their caseload, in order to find the best matches for them.

 

Do you envision August and/or Cherish reading your memoir when they’re older? What is the most important thing you hope they take away from the book?

Absolutely. August has already tried to read it, but I keep taking it from him. LOL

I hope they know how much I love and admire them. I did my best to make their journeys easier and hope they remember to pay it forward.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Motherhood So White.

Author photo by Bobby Quillard

We spoke with Nefertiti Austin about her memoir, Motherhood So White, and how she settled into her identity as a Black mother without appeasing societal expectations.

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