Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong

A Bustle Most Anticipated Debut of the Year

"Freshly
fascinating. [Lawton] is a particularly astute observer of the psychological
dislocation caused by growing up mixed race... and she writes beautifully about questions of
identity and belonging, so central to each of us in finding our particular
place in the world.” -New
York Times Book Review

From The Guardian’s
Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through
the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been
raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black.

Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to
homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no
reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and
dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s
insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or
access to black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she
was.

It
was only after her father’s death that Georgina began to unravel the truth
about her parentage—and the racial identity that she had been denied. She fled
from England and the turmoil of her home-life to live in black communities
around the globe—the US, the UK, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and Morocco—and to explore her identity and what it meant to live in
and navigate the world as a black woman. She spoke with psychologists,
sociologists, experts in genetic testing, and other individuals whose
experiences of racial identity have been fraught or questioned in the hopes of
understanding how, exactly, we identify ourselves.

Raceless is
an exploration of a fundamental question: what constitutes our sense of self?
Drawing on her personal experiences and the stories of others, Lawton grapples
with difficult questions about love, shame, grief, and prejudice, and reveals
the nuanced and emotional journey of forming one’s identity.