One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard is a 514-page hardcover published by Little, Brown and Company, 2007, stated first edition. The dust jacket has light rubbing and shelf wear. Apart from some bumping to the spine, the condition is near fine, with no evidence of use. The condition is very good.
Two months before he died of cancer, renowned literary critic Anatole Broyard called his grown son and daughter to his side, intending to reveal a secret he'd kept all their lives and most of his own: he was black. Born in the French Quarter in 1920, Anatole began to conceal his racial identity after the family moved from New Orleans to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brookyln and his parents resorted to "passing" in order to get work. From his bohemian days in the cafes of Greenwich Village in the 1940s to his ascension in the ranks of the literary elite, he continued to maintain the facade.
Serving as a daily book critic for The New York Times for more than a decade, and as a columnist and editor at The New York Times Book Review for several years after that, Anatole was an influential voice in American culture. To his children he was a charming and attentive father who had strived to raise his family in the lush enclaves of Connecticut and Martha's Vineyard, providing an upbringing far removed from his own childhood. But even as he lay dying, the truth was too difficult for him to admit, and it was finally her mother who told Bliss and Todd that their sheltered New England childhood had come at a price.
In her remarkable memoir, Bliss Broyard examines her father's choices and the impact of this revelation on her own life. Seeking out unknown relatives in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, she uncovers the 250-year history of her family in America, and chronicles her own evolution from privileged Wasp to a woman of mixed-race ancestry. The result is a beautifully crafted and touching portrait of her father, and a provocative examination of the profound consequences of racial identity.
ISBN-13: 978-0-316-16350-7
ISBN-10: 0-316-16350-3
