Bliss Broyard's "One Drop"

Paper Summary:

This paper is critical of Bliss Broyard's "One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life - A Story of Race and Family Secrets". The author points out that the problem with "One Drop" is that it is not only the story of Broyard's discovery that she has some African-American ancestry and what that means for her opinion on race. It also is the story of her father, Anatole Broyard, her immediate family, her father's family and the history of race relations in the United States. The paper concludes that Broyard's complex memoir makes very clear that she spent much of her life feeling very conflicted about race. The reader is left with no real answer to her questions about America's system of race discrimination and its impact on people of mixed ancestry.

From the Paper:

"Broyard's story of her father and his decision to pass reveals a level of dishonesty by the man that was so dramatic that it actually evokes a feeling of pity for him. The decision to pass as white, whether it was initially intentional, or a just the side effect of not being rejected as a black man when people mistakenly believed he was white, was clearly something that impacted Anatole's life in a dramatic manner. He distanced himself from his family, and his children had no real relationship with either of his sisters or his parents, though their grandmother was alive for much of their childhood."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Broyard, Bliss. One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life - A Story of Race and Family Secrets. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2007.

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