Self-Portrait in Black and White

A SUNDAYTIMES 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 chil