From Publishers Weekly
For Broyard, who was raised as white in Connecticut, the discovery that her father, the writer and critic Anatole Broyard, wasn't exactly white raised the question of how black I was—a question that set her in search of the history of the most well-known defector from the black race in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the first section, Broyard weaves her privileged childhood together with later travels to New Orleans (her father's birthplace) and Los Angeles (where there is a determinedly white set of Broyards as well as a determinedly black set). Part two extends from the first Broyard, a Frenchman arriving in mid-18th century Louisiana territory, to six-year-old Anatole's 1927 arrival in Brooklyn. The last section is devoted to Anatole's life. Broyard's identity quest takes her on an odyssey through social, military, legal, Louisiana and general American history, as well as U.S. race relations and her family DNA, introducing innumerable relatives, classmates, friends and employers, and making for a rather overstuffed account. Fortunately, she's got an ear for dialogue, an eye for place and a storyteller's pacing. But the most compelling element is her ambivalent tenor: Was my father's choice rooted in self-preservation or in self-hatred?... Was he a hero or a cad? Part eulogy, part apologia, the answer is indirect: But he was my dad and we loved each other.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* How easy it is to keep secrets, even within a close-knit family. Bliss Broyard was 24 when she learned that her father, Anatole, for many years the daily book reviewer for the New York Times, had concealed his black heritage. With a mother of Norwegian and French descent (who carried her own burdens), Bliss and her brother never looked anything but white, yet as soon as Bliss was told about her father's lineage, all sorts of family traits suddenly made a new kind of sense. Still, the disclosure left Broyard reeling, uncertain of her identity or place in the world. At the same time, her jazz-loving, lady-killer father was dying. Determined to learn as much as possible about her heritage, Broyard embarked on an intrepid genealogical quest that yielded not only new relatives but also galvanizing insights into Creole culture, African American history, and the cold truth about "passing." Broyard's vivid, compassionate portrait of her complex father raises the question, What is the deep-down cost of living a lie? And her remarkably perceptive and well-wrought saga of blood ties denied and nurtured celebrates the grand diversity and true interconnectivity of the entire human family. Seaman, Donna
