Read This Book Right Now
“I didn’t just not know how to take care of my hair; I had grown to hate it...I couldn’t tuck it behind my ears like all the white girls in school did with their straight, shiny hair, or casually flip it over my shoulder, run my fingers through it, or brush it out of my eyes.”
Typically, I don't recommend a book until I get to the very last page. But I'm making an exception for Rebecca Carroll's piercing memoir, "Surviving the White Gaze" because it is just that damn good. Carroll, a cultural critic and host of the podcast Come Through, begins her story in rural New Hampshire, where she grew up with her bohemian white adoptive parents. But rather than mine her past with an adult eye, she shares the raw complications of her relationships in real-time. Every page pulses with emotion. Read this book, which is already being developed for TV and adapted by Carroll. I predict the show will be that damn good too.