FINALIST – Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction
WINNER – 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writers Prizes for Nonfiction
FINALIST – Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction
An unforgettable coming-of-age memoir about a Black boy adopted into a white, Christian fundamentalist family
Perfect for fans of Educated, Punch Me Up to the Gods, and Surviving the White Gaze
“An affecting portrait of life inside the twin prisons of racism and unbending orthodoxy.” –Kirkus Reviews
A powerful, experiential journey from white cult to Black consciousness: Harrison Mooney’s riveting story of self-discovery lifts the curtain on the trauma of transracial adoption and the internalized antiblackness at the heart of the white evangelical Christian movement.
Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man the same way Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me was inspired by James Baldwin, Harrison Mooney’s debut memoir will captivate readers with his powerful gift for storytelling, his keen eye for insight and observation, and his wry sense of humor.
As an adopted and homeschooled Black boy with ADHD at white fundamentalist Christian churches and tent revivals, Mooney was raised amid a swirl of conflicting and confusing messages and beliefs. Within that radical and racist right-wing bubble along the U.S. border in Canada’s Bible Belt, Harrison was desperate to belong and to be “visible” to those around him.
But before ultimately finding his own path, Harrison must first come to understand that the forces at work in his life were not supernatural, but the same trauma and systemic violence that has terrorized Black families for generations. Reconnecting with his birth mother–and understanding her journey–leads Harrison to a new connection with himself: the eyes looking down were my true mother’s eyes, and the face was my true mother’s face, and for the first time in my life, I saw that I was beautiful.
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