I’m always looking for books that offer new views on to social construct we call race. I like reading both North American and European accounts, because it’s important to understand not only the similarities, but the differences between the two. This book, however, offers a story I’ve never encountered before: The story of a woman who was raised as white, even though she is Black. This is an experience I can’t imagine, and one I wanted to learn about.
Lawton was raised in an English suburb, in a loving family that included her two parents and her younger brother. She lives in a community small enough for everyone to know one another, and so throughout her school experience, everyone around her knows and subscribes (to varying degrees) to the family story – that she is a genetic throwback who gets her colouring from a distant ancestor, but is in fact the biological daughter of a white Irish monther and a white British father. It may have seemed like an innocent fib to her parents, a way for them to move past a historical betrayal and live a happy life as a family. But it didn’t take into account the suffering it unloaded onto Georgina Lawton, who had to face the constant questions, confused stares and lies that surrounded her.
This book is simultaneously fascinating and shocking. It begins with an explanation that almost, very nearly, makes some kind of weird sense. At that time mixed relationships weren’t the norm, and further to that her mother was married to her father at the time, so acknowledging the true origins of Lawton’s ethnicity would mean facing that betrayal as well. It seemed easier to gloss over it, and a way that her father could save face and her mother could ensure financial support and social acceptance for herself and her child. It was a somewhat different time, and in a small town that was somewhat delayed even then in terms of accepting diversity. If Lawton had not been clearly of another ethnicity, likely no one ever would have questioned or known that she was different. How many children were raised not knowing their true origins? (Maybe don’t think on that point too hard or you may become quite uncomfortable.)
For most of Lawton’s childhood, the majority of people around her don’t bring it up. Most come to accept it, and just see her as herself. But as she gets older and begins to move out into the world, the questions become more and more insistent and harder to ignore. Lawton begins researching her background, starting with DNA tests. The results turn her whole life on its head, and throw a grenade right into the middle of her family.
I spent most of this reading experience struggling – and failing – to understand. I tried to understand the social landscape that would lead a mother to not only present this lie, but to double down on it over and over again as Lawton got older and began to ask questions. I don’t understand how the damage of that wasn’t seen. It’s unfathomable to me.
Lawton’s story is, of course, deeply emotional. She had been close to her father up until his death, and the subsequent revelations about her heritage were painful in many ways, but most notably in terms of how it framed her relationship with her father who was no longer alive to tell her that he loved her anyway. She’d been denied a cultural identity that she then had to search out and learn about on her own, right down to learning how to care for her hair. She had to negotiate her relationships with her mother and brother. I can’t imagine the emotional impact of all of that, but it’s huge.
This book was a heartbreaking look at what it means to not know your origins and ethnic history, and the importance of honesty. It shows the damage that lies can do, and the pain that lasts even through the discovery of the truth. It was an important book, and one I’m glad to have read. It wasn’t perfect as a piece of writing – it can be a bit repetitive in places, and I personally would have preferred it to be framed as a bit of a mystery rather than the truth being revealed in the first section of the book. But these are minor editorial quibbles in a story that has great value in the telling. Definitely one I’d recommend and hope others will read.
From The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black.
Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.
It was only after her father’s death that Georgina began to unravel the truth about her parentage—and the racial identity that she had been denied. She fled from England and the turmoil of her home-life to live in black communities around the globe—the US, the UK, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, and Morocco—and to explore her identity and what it meant to live in and navigate the world as a black woman. She spoke with psychologists, sociologists, experts in genetic testing, and other individuals whose experiences of racial identity have been fraught or questioned in the hopes of understanding how, exactly, we identify ourselves.
Raceless is an exploration of a fundamental question: what constitutes our sense of self? Drawing on her personal experiences and the stories of others, Lawton grapples with difficult questions about love, shame, grief, and prejudice, and reveals the nuanced and emotional journey of forming one’s identity. – Goodreads
Book Title:Â Raceless
Author:Â Georgina Lawton
Series:Â No
Edition:Â Audiobook
Published By:Â Harper Perennial
Released:Â February 23, 2021
Genre:Â Non-Fiction, Memoir, Race, Identity, Family, Ethnicity
Pages:Â 304
Date Read:Â February 8-9, 2024Â
Rating: 7/10
Average Goodreads Rating:Â 4.11/5 (940 ratings)
