Secret Daughter
A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away
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4.4 • 89 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring white actress, and James “Stump” Cross, a well-known black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by black friends when she was four years old and could no longer pass as white, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race. Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June’s astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive. This is an inspiring testimony to the endurance of love between mother and daughter, a child and her adoptive parents, and the power of community.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Using her 1997 Emmy Award winning documentary, Secret Daughter, as inspiration for her memoir of the same name, Cross, a TV producer and journalism professor at Columbia University, narrates her life as the daughter of a white woman and a well-known black vaudevillian (Jimmy Cross) who was handed over to a black couple for rearing. Several elements fight for the center of this memoir: the emotional roller coaster of life spent between her bourgeois adoptive black family in Atlantic City and her Hollywood show business biological mother (who usually introduced her daughter as a niece or having been adopted); her undergraduate difficulties at the Harvard Crimson, "a club of smart-assed white boys and prefeminist women, more butch than liberated"; and life in the '60s ("It was the season of Angela Davis's trial, so prisons were hip"). She also weaves in gossipy show business tales that follow the career trajectory of F Troop actor Larry Storch as well as some settling of scores (Jerry Lewis borrowed from her father's act "Stump and Stumpy" but didn't send flowers to his funeral). Unfortunately, the bits and pieces fail to cohere, and her narrative often falls flat ("I rose from the piano stool and crossed the room") in what is otherwise an intriguing story.
Customer Reviews
Human Relationships
The author deftly takes the reader through the intermingling family and friend relationships as it intersects with the realities of being a person with heritage in the black and white community. The reality of her mother’s life and the decisions she makes is interesting and deeply touching.
Finding June
I loved how June was able to put all of the pieces together that summed up her life.
Moving
This is a thoughtful memoir of an interracial childhood and womanhood. Excellent.