I couldn't get through this title. It ended up not being for me, but I hope it finds a hope with other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Gorgeous writing - compelling, beautiful, complex story about a woman trying to understand who she is and where she fits. It’s lovely and nuanced and important. I hope you read it. Heartfelt thanks to Simon and Schuster for the copy. I’m grateful.

Carroll is a writer who tells her story with clarity and patience, detailing impactful moments of her childhood. She embeds the surprise, pain and connectedness of difference in each of her chapters. While the narrative was paced a slow, it is consistent and meaningful throughout. A wonderful and worthy memoir .

It was a good important read but felt a little flat somehow. A lot what felt like extraneous details. Appreciate the author's courage in sharing her story.

Writer and cultural critic, Rebecca Carroll’s memoir “Surviving the White Gaze” tells her compelling story of being a biracial Black child adopted by White parents and coming of age in a predominantly White New England community.

Carroll walks us through her complex journey of racial identity development as a Black girl in 1970s & 1980s New Hampshire. She shows how early on, she recognizes how Whiteness is, in many spaces, seen as the standard of beauty, sophistication and intelligence.

What complicates things even further is Carroll’s relationships with those closest to her. Her parents operate off of the ideology of being well-meaning white folks, who practice a “colorblind” approach to race.

Her White biological mother, who she meets as a teen is a PIECE OF WORK. She fetishizes Black men, promotes racist Black stereotypes and, in many ways, attempts to sabotage Carroll’s racial identity development... I was angry for the author when reading certain parts.

However, what makes this book triumphant is seeing Carroll show us how she literally went out of her way to curate Blackness in her life by seeking out Black friends, Black literature, Black cities and Black educational experiences.

I honestly think this book could be a miniseries. It’s timely, and could be incredibly informative for many types of people. From Black kids and young adults navigating white spaces, to White parents with Black children, and even educators, students, etc.

This is a riveting memoir which I believe we’ll be hearing a great deal about in the years to come.

Born in the late-60s to teen parents, Black father and white mother, Rebecca Carroll was then adopted by a white family of artists with an "open-marriage" and raised in New Hampshire. Carroll reflects upon her experience growing up bi-racial in a white community and how her identity was torn, molded, and re-shaped throughout her life. Though her adoptive parents are loving, Carroll still feels a sense of disconnect from her communities. At 11, Carroll meets her birth mother, which only adds to her struggle with identity and self-acceptance. From her struggle with taking care of her hair, learning about finding the right shade of make-up to internalized racism and blatant racism in academia, Carroll's experiences are heart-wrenching and frustrating.

This memoir is written with narrative flair and artistic liberties that allows the reader to be transported into the time, space, and mental place within Carroll's experience. The relationships with her parents was so frustrating! Her biological mother is a real piece of work and her adoptive parents are oblivious to Carroll's needs as a Black child while being unaware to how their lack of boundaries negatively affected their children. Though sad and angering (signs of a good memoir, I'd say, if it incites emotions within the reader), Carroll's story is important to share for those struggling with the various facets of their identity to have a sense of not being alone. I would have liked more information on Carroll's experiences as an adult into present-day rather than what feels like a summary with a pretty bow.

This was an absolutely wonderful coming-of-age memoir! The fast-paced story makes you lose yourself in the book. I really enjoyed the short chapters, it made the story easy to read, and I kept telling myself, just one more chapter.

This is obviously a story of racism, but I liked the perspective that we gain from it. Carroll is a black child adopted by a white family. I think that we can all gain insight and learn something from every story that someone has to tell, and this is one of them. Carroll's relationships throughout her story are poignant and heartbreaking. I think that this is a book that so many people need to read!

I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

Surviving The White Gaze is the story of Rebecca Carroll. She allowed us to have a glimpse of her life and how she navigating being black living in a white community. This book allowed us to travel with Rebecca has she figures out who she is, trying to be accepted by her biological mother, and understanding her true identity. Rebecca is not alone in this world with trying to navigate being a black woman being raised by white parents who are doing the best they can. This book came out a the right time as race relations and social justice are a part of our daily conversations. This is a good read for those who can relate toweling lost, but want to be found.

Oooh weeee! While this book started a bit slow to me and at times I wanted to scream at the author, it is such a raw, organic look into the inner turmoil we contend with when trying to unpack and figure out who the hell we are being in this world. While many of us have guides along the way during our formative years, Carroll was left to wade through the muck mostly on her own leaving her susceptible to some interesting and toxic characters. Such a fascinating story! Would be a great addition to a class on race, identity and culture

Rebecca Carroll’s 𝙎𝙪𝙧𝙫𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙝𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙂𝙖𝙯𝙚 is an ode to both Pecola Breedlove and Toni Morrison. Reading is a revolutionary act that can truly change the trajectory of one’s life in drastic ways and this is what gave Carroll the impetus to see her world outside of the white gaze of her rural New Hampshire town. This "𝘄𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝘇𝗲" imprisons Black people in white imaginations. Morrison calls it “The little white man that sits on your shoulder and checks out everything you do or say. You sort of knock him off and you’re free.” In this regard, Black people are not given full representation as they truly should be.

In Carroll’s memoir, she grants us the ability to understand how one can survive the impasse of racial identity in America. Forging one’s identity is always a tumultuous act, but even more so as the only Black child in an all-white town. Carroll adds, “It wasn’t just that my siblings and parents didn’t see me; it was that they didn’t see race or think about Blackness, mine or anyone else’s, and I felt like I deserved that.” Carroll pieces together the fragments of her childhood memories between her bucolic, adoptive parents and her unstable, manipulative birth mother as well as the experiences of depression, anxiety, bad relationships, bouts with alcohol, and career choices. The memoir shows us how to find peace, family, and true healing—that we really can survive. It is possible—once we find our clan.

Morrison compels us to free ourselves from the white gaze and Carroll finally breaks free from their gaze in this compelling and powerful memoir. Although Morrison is unable to read this memoir, her imprint is definitely noted by Carroll’s commitment to empowering the lives of young Black girls like Pecola and Black women like Sula everyday through her platforms. Carroll is doing the work that Morrison would definitely be proud of since their first encounter. I’d imagine Morrison would say: “You are still a pleasure, Rebecca!”

If you haven’t picked up this memoir, then you won’t survive 2021 as a real lover of literature then.

Surviving the White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll is a memoir that looks at a Black girl growing up in very white New Hampshire.

Carroll explores her relationship with her well-meaning and loving white adoptive parents who are ultimately naive on what it means to connect their daughter to her Black heritage, along with the manipulative, demeaning, and abusive relationship that she develops with her white birth mother and finally the challenges of being able to even meet/connect with her Black birth father face to face.

It’s heartbreaking to hear Carroll lament about not being exposed to her biggest influences (Morrison, Lorde, Walker, Baldwin) until college and to watch her grapple with her desire to connect with her culture despite being raised as if she were white. Some of the most touching moments are when Carroll at long last finds mentors and friends who guide her in finding herself.

The writing style was simple, which allowed the story to come through without any distractions from the strong points. At times, I questioned if some of the conversations recounted were really as neat and tidy as the remembered dialogue implies, but even if they weren’t it doesn’t matter because the emotions being described were true. It is also clear that the book was written at least partially as a huge jab at Carroll’s birth mother, which only adds to the reader understanding the weight of the trauma that she experienced.

I’ve read essays by this author for over a decade now and did notice some discrepancies, particularly around her relationship with her husband and the timing of her pregnancy with her son which was a little off putting and made me wonder which time she was most truthful.


I almost wish I wasn’t familiar with her work because I really enjoyed the book as a whole. I would have liked a little bit more about her home life before her biological mother became a part of it. The stories of the rest of her life with bad boyfriends and jobs before meeting her husband was interesting.

In the early 70s, Rebecca Carroll lives with her loving, adopted family in a rural New Hampshire town where she is the only Black person. At the age of 10, she meets her white mother and builds a relationship with her and her half brothers, and navigates her racial identity within these two families. Carroll aims to show her reader how the two very different relationships between her birth mother and her adoptive parents led to confusion with her identity and diminished self-worth.

This book is a unique coming of age memoir that shows how much representation matters. The story itself immediately drew me in, but what kept me reading was how Carroll turns a reflective lens on her past to show how important it is for kids to be encouraged to understand their identities and see themselves in the people around them. On one hand, there are Carroll’s adoptive parents who take a color-blind approach to her race, which I think a lot of adults taught their children; don’t speak about (and therefore learn about and engage with) race and it won’t be an issue. On the other hand, we have Carroll’s birth mother who co-opts her Blackness and claims to know more about it (as a white woman!) than she does, gaslighting her and repressing her in another way. Her birth mother often treats her more as an adult and a friend than has a child who should be nurtured. No spoilers but I read several parts of this book with my fist against my forehead, aghast at how the adults in her life speak to her.

Surviving the White Gaze is an apt title for this memoir, her whole life she was held up in the way that her white environment thought she should be, rather than looking at what she needed. This book sucked me in and I sped through it in a matter of hours. This was my first time reading Carroll’s writing and I look forward to picking up her past books. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the chance to read this memoir early.

Still processing this one...⁣
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SURVIVING THE WHITE GAZE has been floating around my feed as an upcoming “must read”, and it includes a lot of my main interests: memoirs by women, race, & family tensions. Rebecca Carroll is a biracial writer who was adopted by a white family in New Hampshire, and she details the many challenges of growing up as the only Black person in such a white space. ⁣
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Carroll’s life is fascinating for sure, but I never got as absorbed as I wanted to. The timeline is a little disjointed, and the prose would either be viscerally descriptive or totally flat. This could easily be a title that grows on me over time, or one that is better suited for reading in small chunks instead of over one weekend. ⁣
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Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an eARC in exchange for this review. ⁣

Carroll grapples with being a black child, adopted by white parents, and reared in small town New Hampshire. She also struggled for,years in her relationship with her biological mother, Tessa, who is white. I found that relationship to be extremely toxic. I couldn’t believe she took an 11 year old to a club. The author continues to find her voice and her own identity though college and young adulthood. I found her writing and story compelling. I think many readers will be interested in her story and find many aspects of the author’s experiences to be relevant.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Rebecca, the daughter of a white mother and black father was adopted by a white hippy family living in rural New Hampshire. She starts off in life feeling loved and cherished, but as she grows more aware of her surroundings and her self--and as her adoptive family tries to meet her needs--her life goes wildly into realms that most of us can't even imagine. Between her adoptive parents and her unusual white mother (I'm being polite calling her unusual) it's amazing that she survives the rest of her childhood. The life she's led is unusual in the range of circumstances she finds herself in as she walks in both the white and black world and tries to find herself as a biracial woman. Somehow and somewhere she got a good amount of grit and in many ways, she comes out on top. Her struggles are very personal and the book is an eye opener in many ways. It's not a book that you say you "enjoyed" per se, but rather one that you feel you are better off for having read it.

How does a biracial child born to a white woman and her Black partner, but then raised by adoptive white parents in a very-white New Hampshire community, figure out who she is and who she wants to be? Rebecca Carroll's adoptive parents let her meet her biological mom, Tess, when she's 11. As a result, the preteen begins to feel a complicated dance of tug o' war between her three adult parents-- none of them with the same brown skin she has.
This memoir was un-put-downable, written in such a way that I quickly felt the pain of not really belonging anywhere. Carroll tells truth on every page, and the reader cheers her on as she finds Black friends and negotiates challenging relationships with white people who never really see her in her fullness. This master of language and storytelling is a gift to the world.
#NetGalley, #SurvivingtheWhiteGaze

A white couple adopt a black baby, raises that baby to understand she is adopted and free to see her mother when she is ready. The initial meeting is cold and distant, a moment that should have been a opportunity to understand who and how she came to be was stained with the disappointments of a young mother too hurt to give love. A daughter thrust into a life where parents are oblivious to the hurt and isolation Rebecca sustained every day. Left to sift through her middle school and high school life adrift in emotional roller coasters she finds some solace in writing, a lifeline that gave voice to her pain. Her dialogues with her birth mother were especially hard to read. It is clear both mother and daughter were looking to be exceptional in an unrelenting world. There was hate at every turn and very little solace at the end of the day. It wasn’t until she found a depth of courage to listen to her own voice for salvation that she felt peace.

I received an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review. What a poignant memoir - different perspective than many out there right now but in a story that needed to be told as it puts in perspective how we treat people that don’t fit on obvious boxes, as well as benign liberal racism. Recommended reading from a wonderful author

Rebecca is born to a white woman whose partner was a black man, and then given up for adoption at birth to a white family. They live in a white town, she goes to a white school, and for most of her childhood doesn't know any other people with skin the color of hers. Her adoptive parents do not make an attempt to integrate their lives with people of color nor encourage her to explore her Black history.

She meets her birth mother Tess later in childhood. Tess becomes a huge influence in her life, yet Tess has many issues of resentment and anger which she imparts to Rebecca. Rebecca grows up without self-esteem or validation from either her adoptive parents or birth mother.

Her exploration of her racial identity is most of the book. She educates herself and finds her own family of the heart with many love affairs and mistakes along the way.