Surviving the White Gaze: Book Review

In Surviving the White Gaze , Rebecca Carroll writes with harsh, brutal emotion and also with soft and tender recall.

The author, a brown woman details the story of her life showing equal parts courage and confusion. She tells the story of her childhood as an adoptee in a white family in a white town. It is a good introduction for those who have not faced a life of being considered "less".

It is a world best described by someone who has experienced being on the outside for any number of reasons, in this case because of race. Anyone who has felt marginalized by the way they look, will feel akin to the hurt, surprise and determination required to survive. (Tweet This)

Although I did find the constant moving from one city to the next, one best friend to the next, one school and workplace to the next quite exhausting, I feel it did reflect the author's pace towards finding herself. And owning her Blackness. 

When she speaks to the conversations with some characters in her life who basically say that 'they don't see her as any different', it hits the mark. As I too am a brown woman. If you don't see your brown friends as different, does that mean that you can't fully appreciate the path that they have walked? I believe that in some part it does. 

We never know another person's journey, we never know how their heart has been broken, nor how many times. 

This book can be difficult to read because of its raw emotion, Carroll's skin does not fit us all. But it should. (Tweet This)

I recommend this book, because we will all find ourselves within the pages. Either proud in our humanity or shamed in our ignorance. And both are worth investigating. (Tweet This)

  

Stay well, stay kind.

 

 

Thanks to #NetGalley #Simon&SchusterCanada #SurvivingtheWhiteGaze for the advance copy, pub date Feb. 2021

Comparison will Make You Unhappy

Comparison will Make You Unhappy

We are each running our own race! Sometimes we put on our running shoes but most often we do it in our everyday clothes. We get up each day and do the best we can. Usually.

And when we look at our neighbour or our colleague we always have to remember that comparison to our fellow traveller will make you unhappy. There will always be someone who makes more money, lives in a bigger house and is better looking. Honestly, that is just a fact. I could tell you to stop looking around but that would be ridiculous because we all love to compare.

We do it even in our yoga class, even on a treadmill, even on the highway driving home.

If you read my words elsewhere, you will know that I have just completed my 20th half-marathon. I figure that's not too bad for someone who pulled on a pair of running shoes at passed the 55-year mark. Certainly, I've lived my life quite convinced that I am not an athlete.

And for some of you who find that number impressive, there are many others who do this kind of thing on a regular basis. It's no big deal.