Black, White and Jewish:
Autobiography of a Shifting Self
By Rebecca Walker
Riverhead, $24.95
ISBN 1573221694

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Rebecca Walker's memoir Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self is a poignant, at times shocking, exploration of the author's turbulent formative years. The daughter of black writer Alice Walker and a white civil rights lawyer, Walker writes about race and sexuality in prose that is by turns lyrical and brutal. This provocative exposition is her first book.

Shuttling between the white, Jewish lifestyle of her East Coast father, and the minority, bohemian existence of her mother in San Francisco, Walker grows up without feeling connected to anyone or anything. As a way of finding her place, she is drawn to drugs and sex. She is as adaptable as a chameleon, yet she never truly fits in anywhere. Her parents appear unsympathetic to her confusion, perhaps because they both conform steadfastly to their own worlds.

Moving from parent to parent, coast to coast, lifestyle to lifestyle, the author reinvents herself every two years. Walker, it seems, is ignored by her father and at times pushed away by her mother. She finds her own voice by fabricating it. Taking her mother's last name, she rejects her paternal half in a desire for a tangible link between herself and the black heritage that the world sees. At the same time, she develops a deep empathy for those different, oppressed or in need. "Do I identify with the legacy of slavery and discrimination in this country? Yes. Do I identify with the legacy of anti-Jewish sentiment and exclusion? Yes. . . . Do I feel I have to choose one of these allegiances in order to know who I am or in order to pay proper respect to my ancestors? No. Do I hope that what my ancestors love in me is my ability to muster compassion for those who suffer, including myself? Yes."

Establishing one's identity and finding one's place in the world are the two threads that bind Walker's book together. Her triumphant spirit and strong personality pervade this moving recollection. Walker is determined to open the eyes of readers, and because her memories of growing up include experiences common to us all, she ultimately succeeds.

Kelly Koepke is a writer in Albuquerque.