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A review by stories_by_sharanja
Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada by Lawrence Hill
4.0
Race is never a really straightforward issue, especially if you've grown up in Canada. It sometimes seems like this country does everything it can to not talk about race. How many times have you heard the words "I don't see color" from the people around you? That's nice...if race doesn't matter to you. But it does matter. And it matters to a lot of people. Especially when how well we are treated in society is in direct correlation with the melanin in our skin.
But this is where it gets really complicated. How does race affect one when your parents are from different races? What if you are both black and white? How do you construct your racial identity then? Are you black? Or depending the lightness of your skin, are you white? Then again, you might be neither and just "mixed"?
These are questions that Lawrence Hill attempts to answer in his novel "Black Berry, Sweet Juice". Hill examines the issue of being mixed race person living in Canada, and what role racial issues have in constructing an individual's identity.
I liked that Hill included stories from his own family's history to illustrate the complexities of being mixed. Hill's parents were involved in an interracial relationship during a time in U.S history in which blacks and whites couldn't even eat at the same restaurant together. They fled to Canada to start a family without the racism of their home country.These stories added something personal to a topic that is already interesting enough. There is an abundance of books on racism in the United States, but not a lot in regards to its neighbor to the north.
But this is where it gets really complicated. How does race affect one when your parents are from different races? What if you are both black and white? How do you construct your racial identity then? Are you black? Or depending the lightness of your skin, are you white? Then again, you might be neither and just "mixed"?
These are questions that Lawrence Hill attempts to answer in his novel "Black Berry, Sweet Juice". Hill examines the issue of being mixed race person living in Canada, and what role racial issues have in constructing an individual's identity.
I liked that Hill included stories from his own family's history to illustrate the complexities of being mixed. Hill's parents were involved in an interracial relationship during a time in U.S history in which blacks and whites couldn't even eat at the same restaurant together. They fled to Canada to start a family without the racism of their home country.These stories added something personal to a topic that is already interesting enough. There is an abundance of books on racism in the United States, but not a lot in regards to its neighbor to the north.