Not Quite Not White
Losing and Finding Race in America
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the ALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Nonfiction
"Captivating... [a] heartfelt account of how newcomers carve a space for themselves in the melting pot of America."
--Publishers Weekly
A first-generation immigrant's "intimate, passionate look at race in America" (Viet Thanh Nguyen), an American's journey into the heart of not-whiteness.
At the age of 12, Sharmila Sen emigrated from India to the U.S. The year was 1982, and everywhere she turned, she was asked to self-report her race - on INS forms, at the doctor's office, in middle school. Never identifying with a race in the India of her childhood, she rejects her new "not quite" designation - not quite white, not quite black, not quite Asian -- and spends much of her life attempting to blend into American whiteness. But after her teen years trying to assimilate--watching shows like General Hospital and The Jeffersons, dancing to Duran Duran and Prince, and perfecting the art of Jell-O no-bake desserts--she is forced to reckon with the hard questions: What does it mean to be white, why does whiteness retain the magic cloak of invisibility while other colors are made hypervisible, and how much does whiteness figure into Americanness?
Part memoir, part manifesto, Not Quite Not White is a searing appraisal of race and a path forward for the next not quite not white generation --a witty and sharply honest story of discovering that not-whiteness can be the very thing that makes us American.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sen, executive editor-at-large of Harvard University Press, depicts her early life in Calcutta, India, and her experiences as a young immigrant in the United States in this captivating memoir. As a young girl in Calcutta in the 1970s, Sen benefited from immense privilege based on her caste, her father's income, and her ability to speak English. She paints a vivid and often disturbing picture of poverty in India and the ways in which she excelled merely because of her circumstances. An incident when she sits on her bed and observes a servant boy about her age angrily sweep the floor of her room leaves an indelible mark on her consciousness. Upon her family's emigration to Cambridge, Mass., when she is 12 years old, Sen's worldview flips to one where she is a minority, and race becomes a focal point of her life. She and her family struggle to learn the ways of whiteness in an attempt to assimilate, from modifying their accents to adopting an American cuisine that consists mostly of Bisquick mixes and Campbell soups. Readers interested in first-generation immigrant stories will enjoy this heartfelt account of how newcomers carve a space for themselves in the melting pot of America.
