This book opens with the author describing the drive to the hospital in France where his white French wife gave birth to their first child, a daughter with blond hair. Thomas Chatterton Williams is himself the child of an interracial couple; his mother is white and his father is Black. With a fairly light complexion, Williams is often mistaken in France as being of Arab descent, but has strongly held on to his identity of a Black man for his whole life. Giving birth to what appear to be white children and his experiences living in France have changed his perceptions about the meaning or even validity of the concept of race. This book is a thoughtful exploration of both his experiences and the development of his new mindset that race is a false construction and that only if we leave it behind will we be able to move beyond and transcend the racism that permeates our reality.
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