When I Was White

A Memoir

By: Sarah Valentine

Narrated by: Danielle Deadwyler

Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's Summary

The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine's childhood as a White girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a Black man.

At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the White girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a Black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race.  

And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from White to Black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her White identity. The supreme discomfort her White family and community felt about addressing issues of race - her race - is a microcosm of race relationships in America.  

A Black woman who lived her formative years identifying as White, Sarah's story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her "passing" was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being Black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she'd grown up with, in order to embrace a new one.

©2019 Sarah Valentine (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Too long and repetitive

I was eager to read this story because the subject interested me. But now I am struggling to finish this book.
The narrator is terrible. She strings the sentences together and leaves no pauses where there should be one, adds pauses where there should NOT be one and makes a lot of it hard to follow.
The author beats the subject to death, over and over. I am trying to grasp her struggle and I have no doubt it was hard for her to learn that she had an African American father, but the book is just too long.

Amazing perspective

I highly recommend this book especially at this time. Sarah’s voice should not be ignored. Her brutal honesty makes teaches us about ourselves.

Enjoyable

Valentine offers her story in a captivating and delightful way that snares readers to want more. Her life, like most of ours, is filled with twist and turns she lays out in a relatable fashion. The only draw back is I was expect a better ending. Seems like she set it up for a future sequel.

Enjoyed reading about your life journey.

Loved it! Simply amazing. Very well written. Thank you for sharing your truth. I pray all of your questions about your life have been answered.

Not as good as interesting as I'd anticipated...

With my too being biracial (blk/wht), ethnically ambiguous, with a mother that raised me to tell "half truths" when asked my ethnicity, along with family that didn't hold their tongue w/regards to their bigotry/bias towards blacks as well as much of those I went to school with, also with having white half siblings that looked nothing like me, in addition to not knowing my father (in my case mine passed away shortly after my birth) and even had my own 'coming out' of sorts (much to the chagrin of some family members)...there were many relatable parts in her book. W/that being said, I wholeheartedly understand why she didn't know/ask until her twenties and it pains me to see the backlash she has experienced from the naysayers that can't remotely begin to relate let alone understand her not knowing. Anyway...my review.
Again, it was relatable in ways and those are the parts that really kept my attention. However, too much detail was given when not relevant to anything. Unfortunately, that was frequent. The narrator...well, she made it difficult to stay focused with her monotone reading, especially with some of her pronunciation of words.

Great book!

I honestly loved this book. Even the narrator was great. I think the only odd thing is the random length of the chapters.