With flawless agility, Tharps (coauthor of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America
) juggles a coming-of-age story, a portrait of the writer as a young woman, a travel book and a detective story along with a memoir about learning to love oneself and one's world. A child of privilege, Tharps “experienced the world as a middle-class suburbanite.” That she was black presented complications but not trauma. (The third grade International Day offered the happy prospect of “a smorgasbord of international flavors” and the awkward prospect of dressing like a slave. She enjoyed the former and passed on the latter.) In a narrative sense, little happens of a dramatic nature. She attends college, goes on an American Field Service stint to Morocco, studies abroad in Spain, falls in love, gets married, has children and becomes a freelance writer. What matters is that Tharps infuses this narrative with the pleasure of shared discovery, taking the reader along to the kids' party where they're playing “Nigger pile-on!” (“They're not talking about you. It's just a game”) and into the chaste arms of the boys she has crushes on. Tharps has written a thought-provoking, answer-seeking consideration of race in the Western world that one can lie back and enjoy. The thoughts and answers will continue to haunt. (Mar.)
