I'm Down

Traces the author's experiences of growing up with a white father who believed himself to be African-American, describing how his efforts to indoctrinate his daughter into black culture caused her to be rejected by her black and white peers. She grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esque sweater, gold chains and a Kangol, telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You could not tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried," she writes. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter down. Unfortunately, his daughter did not quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she could not dance, she could not sing, she could not double dutch, and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team. She was shy, uncool, and painfully white. And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too "black" to fit in with her white classmates. This memoir that questions what it means to be black and white in America.