Well-Read Black Girl Book Club chats SURVIVING THE WHITE GAZE

This month's Well-Read Black Girl book club chats about Surviving the White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll, with Sarah @bookishandblack facilitating! While everyone is welcome to attend, this space is created to be a safe and centering space for Black Women readers. RSVP using the form below to get the Zoom link for this month's meeting!

ABOUT THE CLUB

The Well-Read Black Girl Book Club is a national book club started by Glory Edim that now has additional meetups hosted by Indie Bookstores around the US. This book club centers Black women, their stories, voices, and experiences. While everyone is welcome to attend, this space is created to be a safe and centering space for Black Women readers. The club reads a variety of genres, classics, new literature and nonfiction, and YA that covers the breadth of experience from the Black American and African diaspora. Loyalty's club often reads along with the national club recs and sometimes reads local area authors from Chocolate City. We often feature selections from the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology as well.

Our host is Sarah Coquillat, also known as the bookstagrammer @bookishandblack.

ABOUT THE BOOK

An Esquire Best Book of 2021

A “gorgeous and powerful” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir from cultural critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her painful struggle to overcome a completely white childhood to forge her identity as a Black woman in America.

Rebecca Carroll grew up the only Black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older.

Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her Blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity. As an adult, Carroll forged a path from city to city, struggling along the way with difficult boyfriends, depression, eating disorders, and excessive drinking. Ultimately, through the support of her chosen Black family, she was able to heal.

“Generous, intimate, searching, and formidable” (The Boston Globe), Surviving the White Gaze is a timely examination of racism and racial identity in America today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Carroll is a writer, cultural critic, and host of the podcasts Come Through with Rebecca Carroll (WNYC Studios), and Billie Was a Black Woman. Her writing has been published in The New York TimesThe Atlantic, Essence, New York magazine, and The Guardian, where she was a regular columnist for two years. A former cultural critic for WNYC, and critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times, she is an editor-at-large for The Meteor media collective, as well as the author of several interview-based books about race in America, including the award-winning Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

ABOUT THE HOST

Sarah Coquillat is the bookworm behind Bookish and Black. A health policy researcher by day, she created Bookish and Black to engage with other readers and encourage literary discussion. Sarah is passionate about social justice and reading BIPOC authors.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during our virtual and in-person events.

Event date: 
Tuesday, May 31, 2022 - 6:00pm
Event address: 
Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir By Rebecca Carroll Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781982116279
Availability: On Our Shelves Now - Click on the title to see which location!
Published: Simon & Schuster - February 8th, 2022

RSVP Form: 

RSVP for WRBG Book Club 5/31/22

All fields marked with '*' denotes mandatory fields