This was very interesting even if you weren't a Degrassi fan. She talks about growing up in with a single mother who was low income and Black and contrasting it with her white, Jewish father's family who were very wealthy in Toronto. It sounded challenging but she puts a positive spin on it and made it seem like this switching back and forth made her a better actress and the success she is today.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC. Yes I am in my late 40's but I did watch Degrassi Next Generation because the original was out when I was in mu middle school years and I related with them all. I totally related with her as well because I lived in two worlds growing up also! Good read

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a review.

Anais is one of the best-known Canadian actresses in the Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High series. She is mixed-race and has lived her whole life with a black mom and a white Jewish dad. Her story is a depiction of her life in two different worlds. It also tells the story of her parents growing up.

The Girl in the Middle is a charming memoir about a girl who had to make her way in two different worlds. She found herself wading through the excessive wealth of her Jewish father's family, and the severe poverty of her mother and her family. In the beginning, her mother, who was the 13th of 15 children, grew up sickly and was told by her doctor that she'd never have children. Her mother, Jean, was very studious and soft spoken, while her twin sister, Joann, was rambunctious and outspoken. While in high school, Joann got pregnant and dropped out. Jean had aspersions of getting out of the intense poverty of her family and making something of herself. The family lived in Ohio.

Jean went to university there in Ohio. While there she found community among feminists and those fighting racism. Her soon to be Canadian husband, Stanley, was majoring in theater and photography. One night Jean attended an outdoor play where Stanley was performing. She mustered up her courage and introduced herself to him. They immediately hit it off and became a couple. Before they knew it she became pregnant. Initially, Stanley wanted Jean to have an abortion bit she was determined to have the baby. Before long they decided to go to Stanley's parents to inform them that they were about to become grandparents. The news was not received well. His father accused Jean of bamboozling his son. After a heated argument they left and Stanley reluctantly decided to make it on their own. It didn't help that his father had disowned him.

Stanley's friend introduced him to a cult following an east Indian man. He decided to go on a pilgrimage to India to sit under this man's teachings. While there, Jean began having false labor contractions and wrote Stanley a letter begging him ho return home for the birth of the baby. He had promised her when he left that he'd be there, so he packed up and went home. It should be noted here that Jean and Stanley were living in poverty. What little money they had, Stanley had taken most of it on his trip. Anyway, Stanley arrived in time for the birth. At this point he still wasn't excited about the baby. But when he was finally allowed to hold his little girl he fell on love with her.

Over time, Stanley became more and more disillusioned with his life away from the cult and decided to return. At this point the cult was in Oregon, so he took his now wife and daughter with him. Jean was the only African American there and she felt left out. She wanted to go home. Home was in Toronto, Canada where Stanley's parents lived. Once home, Jean and Stanley fought viciously. The fights became more and more heated. Their daughter, Anais, was frightened by the loud brawls. Eventually, Stanley went back to the cult of leaving Jean and Anais to fend for themselves. Once more, Jean found herself in abject poverty. They had to leave their apartment and move into a rooming house. They had tremendous difficulty making ends meet. Jean was in a dead end job not making enough money to pay her bills.

One day Stanley's mother, Shirley, tracked them down and asked Jean if she could take Anais to spend the weekend with her. Jean very reluctantly agreed. Anais didn't want to go but Jean made her. Initially the two of them were wary of each other. But as time went on, Anais found she really liked her grandmother. Shirley took her shopping for nice clothes that she was to leave behind to wear only when she was there. Anais realized she had to live a very different privileged life when with her grandmother and an extremely under privileged life when with her mother. There was a huge chasm between the two. While she enjoyed her time with her grandmother, she felt she had to pretend she had a horrible time when she was with her mother. The two women couldn't stand each other, which made it so very difficult for Anais.

Anais missed her father tremendously. He seldom came home, but when he did, he and Jean fought profusely. Finally Stanley decided to stay home but refused to live with his family. He took an apartment and became a cab driver. Anais lived half time with him and half time with her mother. She and her father got along famously, while, although she and her mother were very close, Anais felt she had to parent her mother.

Anais was blessed with a little sister, Lea, from her mother's union with Dan. The girls were inseparable. Jean and Dan were living together. Over time they started spatting and Dan finally moved out. He took Lea to live with him while Jean got back on her feet. Then Lea started living part time with each of her parents. Jean went back to school to study social work and landed a good job.

As Anais grew older, she experienced more and more freedom. She continued visiting her grandmother. While there, her grandfather acted as if she wasn't there. He was seldom home, 2hich it seemed that his absence was by design. No matter, her relationship with her grandmother flourished. But over time, her relationship took a big hit. Anais became angry with her largely because she felt she was forced to live to cataclysmically different lives. She was also angry because her grandmother wouldn't accept her mother. Anais started visiting less frequently.

When Anais was in 5th grade she began acting. At first she made $50, then $100 and then, as she got older and had more demanding roles she made much more. From the time she began acting, she helped her mother with rent and bills. By the time she was a young teenager she began needing her independence and needing to find herself. Eventually, she and her mother began quarrelling. While her mother depended on her to be her support person, Anais needed her individuality. So she moved in with her father. He gave her all the freedom she needed. And she began helping her father with his bills.

Finally, she began visiting her grandmother again. And her grandfather, with his heart ailments, started communicating with her. They spent leisurely days talking about his immigration and the racism he faced as a young Jewish person. He told her how he founded his company and became wealthy. She joined her grandparents at the Jewish country club and people started recognizing her from television. Her grandparents were profusely proud of her.

After a while, Anais and her mother started mending their fractured relationship. Her mother decided to move back to Ohio where she bought an apple farm, not unlike the farm she grew up on. She was single and happy. She had the support of all of her brothers and sisters.

Anais felt she learned valuable lessons from her vastly different families. She'd had the experience of going to Ohio and meeting her mother's side of the family. There, she felt she fit. She didn't have to put on airs. She was free to be her black self. There was no need to fit into a rigid white box.

Anais now has children of her own. She is teaching them from the lessons she learned.

This book was a good read. I strongly recommend it for African Americans who are finding it difficult to navigate through a very white world, and for whites who can't find it in their hearts to embrace and cherish the black experience.

I'm guessing that many readers may be attracted to this book be cause of the television series called DeGrassi Junior High School that the author was part of. However, I've never seen the series and I was attracted by the description of Granofsky's upbringing.

This has to be one of the most unique and dramatic upbringings a child could have. To go between two, and sometimes three different households at such a young age is almost unthinkable. Yet, not only did she survive, but she thrived. It is a fascinating account of a childhood that seems almost fictional. The writing is solid and we get a detailed look into the different households of her mother, father, and other family members. It's intriguing and fascinating and not a story that you can forget. Kudos to the author for sharing her story. I hope it is well read.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's one that will continue to stand out in my mind. Highly recommended!

I'll admit. At first, when I saw The Girl in the Middle by Anais Granofsky, I recognized the writer as a favorite character, Lucy, on the cultural phenomena of 1980s teen shows, Degrassi Junior High. I loved that show, and its many iterations like Degrassi the Next Generation. I thought it would be mostly about her time on the show.

Instead, I found a thoughtful, intriguing memoir about finding out who you are when many factors pull you in different directions. The author is the offspring of a black mother and white father who met at a progressive liberal arts school in the early 1970s when the world was in flux. Her mother grew up with multiple brothers and sisters on a farm in rural Ohio with her poor yet proud family. Her father grew up in an affluent Jewish family in suburban Toronto, Canada with his immigrant parents who started a successful paper company.

This beautifully written novel shows the author struggling with her identity, which incorporated so many disparate elements from her race to her socioeconomic background to her philosophical and religious beliefs. She engages in code-shifting when she's with her mother who works at a women's shelter and her father who takes up with a guru and lives the hippie lifestyle. Although they marry, they divorce quickly due to their differences, which originally drew them together.

She also spends weekends with her wealthy grandparents who show her a completely different lifestyle of privilege. Even though they had doubts about the marriage from the start, and you see that the author's father rebelled from his upbringing, the author and her grandmother build a bond that only rivals the ones she undertook with her parents.

I really loved hearing how she figured out how to balance the very different sides of her own personality and emerges with this incredibly diverse background. You also see how it helped her develop into the person that she is and the skilled actor that took her from the very early years of Degrassi to her own career in the arts.

My only caveat is that she didn't spend more time talking about Degrassi or her future career. I would have also liked to hear how she met her husband. Other than that, I didn't realize that this author has a flair for writing, too. The book was so eloquently written and kept me completely riveted. So, not only is she a great actress, but a wonderful writer, too.

I grew up watching Degrassi so it was interesting to learn more about one of its stars' lives. Granofsky makes a solid contribution to the voices driving change in this generation. Check it out!

I remember watching a few episodes of Degrassi High, but didn’t realize the author was on it, we are the same age so I read her memoir with great interest. She came from two world: culturally and financially. She discusses moving between the two worlds and the challenges she faced. She was very close to her mother and paternal grandmother. I enjoyed her family history stories the most.
Ultimately, she concludes she had to make her own way in the world and I think that message resonates with all of us.

The Girl in the Middle
Growing Up Between Black and White, Rich and Poor
by Anais Granofsky
Pub Date 12 Apr 2022
HarperOne
Biographies & Memoirs | Nonfiction (Adult)


I am reviewing a copy of The Girl in the Middle through HarperOne and Netgalley:




The Girl in the Middle is a poignant and timely memoir—written with the searing power of Beautiful Struggle and Born a Crime—Degrassi Junior High star Anais Granofsky contemplates the lingering impact of a childhood spent in two opposite and warring worlds.



Anais Granofsky is recognized around the world for her role as Lucy Hernandez on the hit show Degrassi. But her childhood is largely unknown. Growing up, Anais was caught between two vastly different worlds: her father, Stanley, came from a wealthy, prominent, white Jewish family in Toronto. Her mother, Jean, was one of 15 children from a poor Black Methodist family in Ohio directly descended from freed Randolph slaves. When Anais’s parents met at Antioch College in the early 1970s and soon had their first child, they didn’t anticipate being cut off by the wealthy Granofskys, or that Stanley would find his calling in the spiritual teaching of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, change his name to Fakeer, and leave his family for an ashram in India.




When Anais was young she and her Mother tethered on the abyss of poverty. She and her Mother shared a single room, and a single mattress in social housing in Toronto, while her grandparents lived in a mansion that was 20 minutes away. As Anais grew up, she spent weekends with her wealthy Granofsky grandparents. On Saturdays and Sundays she would wear expensive clothes and eat lunch by the pool. In the weeks between, she and her mother lived day by day penniless, rarely knowing where their next meal would come from. From a very young age Anais realized that if she wanted to be loved, she had to keep her two lives separate, learning to code switch between her Jewish identity on the weekend and her Black one during the week.



Her life was compartmentalized, until at age 12, Anais was cast in the internationally successful television show Degrassi Junior High. 
The Girl in the Middle is a tale of two vastly different families and the granddaughter they shared and clashed over. Compassionate and vivid, Anais’s story is a powerful lens revealing two divided families and the systematic, generational oppression that separated them.



I give The Girl in the Middle five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!