From the Archives: Rebecca Carroll on Growing Up Surviving the White Gaze

Tell Me About Your Father

This week, we're highlighting Elizabeth's May 2021 interview with the writer and cultural critic Rebecca Carroll, whose memoir "Surviving the White Gaze" details a childhood with white adoptive parents that left her feeling disconnected from her identity as a Black woman. This episode features a new intro, in which Elizabeth reads from some of Carroll's February 2023 essay on her life since the book came out. In short, her parents have threatened to sue her and she's got Dinesh D'Souza haunting her Twitter replies. Despite this, Rebecca continues to bravely talk about her experience as a transracial adoptee, the ways that white people still get to dictate what a family looks like, and the family of choice she's created as an adult. You can read Rebecca's update here: https://wearethemeteor.com/still-surviving-the-white-gaze/

Original episode description: In her new memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, author and cultural critic Rebecca Carroll describes with heroic honesty and compassion, an upbringing seated in an adoptive family whose whiteness prevents them from facing their failings, in a country unwilling to do the same. Listen as Rebecca talks to Elizabeth about navigating overt and covert racism, her difficulty connecting with both her birth and adoptive fathers, and marrying a man who would celebrate and support their son’s Blackness, always. Just a note: This episode includes a discussion of sexual abuse and eating disorders.

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