Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black
Book Review: Amazing and Heart-breaking
Summary: 5 Stars
Gregory Howard Williams is a man who faced up to his father's past. A white boy who was found out he was really Black. This book is about "passing" and the legacy it leaves behind. Williams does not ask for the reader to pity his heritage, rather he seeks to make people understand why his father decided to cross the colour line and become a white-man. This is a well-written and thought provoking book that I would recommend to anyone from the age of 13 and up.Book Review: Some Things Never Change
Summary: 5 Stars
I came to read this book as an assignment in preparation for my oral exams in defense of the PhD in English from The Ohio State University. Initially, I resisted reading the book thinking it was "just another story of a White person trying to make some money off a trend involving Black people. However, when I finally sat down to read the book, I found Gregory Williams' story so compelling that I could not put it down until I had read every word two days later. When Dean Williams first arrived at OSU as the Law School Dean, scholars fervently debated the finer points of his book and students flocked to hear him speak. After having actually read the text, I can understand why they were drawn to this man. He describes in heart-wrenching details the privations he and his brother endured when they were forced to remove themselves from the life of White privilege in Virginia to one where survival in Muncie, Indiana meant learning quickly the cold hard facts of being Black in skin that appeared to be White. The family friend who took Gregory and his brother into her home is the only character who stands out as more memorable than the boys' alcoholic paternal grandmother. No reader could sit dry-eyed through a reading of this book where two innocent children were scorned and battered by relatives, peers, and strangers alike. Gregory Williams is to be admired for withstanding the agony of his unusual upbringing and the marvelous outcome as he now holds a superlative position in one of the nation's most prestigious universities that prides itself on the number of minority doctorates it produces. My only puzzlement following the reading of the book and viewing the family Dean Williams built, is that he seems to have ended up with a very "White-looking" family and so he seems to perpetuate the same image of self-hate that he describes his father as producing. However, Williams is truly to be commended for his superb handling of a "race" issue that confronts a society which declares that there is no biological basis in race---all Blacks are not always all Black (F. James Davis) and more multi-racial writers and scholars need to step forward and be recognized.Book Review: he told the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Summary: 4 Stars
he told of all his problems, the pain, the happiness,and the sorrows. i really though i was there with himBook Review: I have recommended this book to everyone I know.
Summary: 4 Stars
This book should be required reading for students and teachers in high shcool and college. Besides being an engrossing story about racism, it also represents the ability of one individual raised in overwhelming circumstances to want to change his life and succeed. This book represents the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.Book Review: Not Dark enough for the colored and too Dark for the whites
Summary: 4 Stars
Life On the Color Line is a very powerful book. It shows the struggle Gregory Williams had to encounter being black but looking white. First part of his life he believed he was white. It wasn't until his mother abandoned him and his father lost the family business that he and his little brother, Mike, found out they were black. They moved to Muncie, Indiana. Greg's father was an alcoholic and could not care for the boys properly. So a kindhearted woman, Miss Dora took them in. Between holding down a job to get by and trying to guide Mike in the right direction,(who had made a turn for the worst) Gregory must also overcome the stuggle of racism to gain his education. Thoughout this book Gerg is descriptive of how life was growing up colored and looking white. In the last chapter I think he was to general and quick on how he finished the book. For me he left to many unanswered questions. I feels like the story is not finished. But all-and-all I really liked the book and would recommend for everyone to read it.