Why read Life on the Color Line?

Book cover of Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black

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“Heartbreaking and uplifting… a searing book about race and prejudice in America… brims with insights that only someone who has lived on both sides of the racial divide could gain.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A triumph of storytelling as well as a triumph of spirit.”—Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Life on the Color Line as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Naomi Raquel Enright

Author

I read Life on the Color Line as a junior in high school. I was amazed by William’s intimate account of having lived, first as a white boy in America, and then, as a Black boy in America. His life story illuminates not only the fiction that “race” is biological and immutable, but the powerful reality of white supremacy. Little did I know when reading Williams’s book that I would one day give birth to a son this society deems to be white. This is, in many ways, a painful book, but it is also one about the power of…

From Naomi's list on the complexity of identity and to challenge racism.