From Powells.com
Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.
Synopses & Reviews
"Courageous, achingly honest."
— Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
"A compelling, incisive and thoughtful examination of race, origin and what it means to be called an American. Engaging, heartfelt and beautifully written, Lythcott-Haims explores the American spectrum of identity with refreshing courage and compassion." — Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
A fearless debut memoir in which beloved and bestselling How to Raise an Adult author Julie Lythcott-Haims pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a biracial black woman in America.
Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning effect, Lythcott-Haims briskly and stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American expresses also, through Lythcott-Haims’s path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other."
The author of the New York Times bestselling anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult, Lythcott-Haims has written a different sort of book this time out, but one that will nevertheless resonate with the legions of students, educators and parents to whom she is now well known, by whom she is beloved, and to whom she has always provided wise and necessary counsel about how to embrace and nurture their best selves. Real American is an affecting memoir, an unforgettable cri de coeur, and a clarion call to all of us to live more wisely, generously and fully.
Review
"Real American is a courageous, achingly honest meditation on what it means to come to consciousness as a mixed race child and adult in a nation where Black lives weren't meant to matter." Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Review
"To write with such an open heart about race and Blackness takes great courage. To do so in prose that is at once elegant and raw takes great talent." Ayelet Waldman, bestselling author of Bad Mother and of A Really Good Day
Review
"Breaks the silence on what it means to grow up mixed-race in America. Her spare but powerful prose has an emotional rawness that will profoundly resonate with all readers and help many feel a little less alone." Heidi W. Durrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Review
"A cathartic and bold truth-telling." Danzy Senna, bestselling author of Caucasia and New People
Review
"A powerful, honest book that should be required reading for everyone." Anita Amirrezvani, author of The Blood of Flowers and Equal of the Sun
Review
"A bold, impassioned memoir that...riveting[ly] and deeply...sheds fresh light on race and discrimination in American society." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Julie Lythcott-Haims, bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, served as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to the undergraduate experience. She holds a BA from Stanford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and resides in the Bay Area with her husband, their two teenagers, and her mother.