White Boy: A Memoir

I loved the book -- I read it when it was first published because Dr. Naison was my professor of African-American studies in 1971 at Fordham. He was a terrific professor and the texts in the course were seminal -- I still have many of them to this day on my bookshelf. Anyway, back to this book -- one of the reasons I read it when I found out it was a memoir was to see if I was in it and, in a way, I was. You see, I transferred to another university after my freshman year at Fordham, and in my sophomore year, I got a phone call from Dr. Naison in the hall phone in my dormitory -- I'll never forget it -- he called me to ask me for a date, and this is referenced in White Boy -- not me, specifically, but that he dated a variety of women after his break-up from his long-term lover. I don't remember how long we saw each other -- I don't think it was a very long time -- but I was so flattered and intimidated because I was only 19 and he was 28 at the time, and he was my professor, and he had this marvelous book-filled apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, every aspiring intellectual's dream, and I was that aspiring intellectual. So it didn't work at that time because I was just too young, but for all his fierce leftist radicalism, I discovered that emotionally, he was a sweet, loving, kind and generous man, and his wife is very lucky.

This is wonderful memoir. Much like in his classes at Fordham, Dr. Naison really brings history alive, reminding us that it is more than what you read about in the typical history book, it is about the people that lived it. He gives his life a powerful, emotional, and thoughful voice. For any current and future Fordham University students, I would highly recommend his classes and this book. For everyone else, buy it and see what you missed out when you decided to attend a different school!

Naison's gritty narrative takes readers on an odyssey from the multiracial streets of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York, where the author spent his wonder years in the 1950s to the vibrant intellectual and activist culture of Fordham University's Black Studies department in the 1990s. In the process, readers learn of the trials and joys this "white boy" faced living a life -- as an activist, lover and teacher -- that transgressed the racial mores of his day. "White Boy," presents an alternative to the standard understanding of "whiteness," which mandates that it be the political and cultural antithesis of "blackness." Naison's book presents a more hopeful picture. Being white and spending 30 years teaching African American studies was not a problem for Naison, or his colleagues at Fordham. He writes, "because we were willing to listen to many voices, and to see race from multiple vantage points, our department provided an intellectual outlet for students of many backgrounds grappling with their racial and cultural identities (...) (W)e created an environment where fighting racism, and exploring the meaning of racial differences, became a moral and political imperative and the center of a vibrant intellectual community" (224-225). Naison's memoir presents an often neglected story in the history of whiteness in America, one where racial difference can help bring different people together instead of constantly keeping them apart.And just as Naison's life transgressed racial norms, his book defies standards as well. People are reading "White Boy" in places you would never think to see a book published by an academic press: beaches, subways, transit workers' locker rooms, parish offices. Simply put, this in no ordinary memoir.

The beauty of social history in America is that stories once deemed irrelevant or peripheral to what makes us, as Americans, tick have now begun to come to the fore. This is extremely important if one seeks to gain a more complete picture of why America is like it is. Working with grammar and high school kids, the primary gripe I hear regarding why they should care about history is that "It's Boring and means nothing to me". This is the fault of history teachers at this and the high school level, who consistently fail to provide an adequate sense of all of the feeling, passion and pure emotion that makes American history worthy of study. The passion and emotion is a direct function of the machinations of the people who live here; their stories deserve telling, not only to make for an interesting read, but to let us know how we got to where we are, as Americans, today. "Whiteboy" works because both aspects, the fire and the historical relevance, are not only covered, but conveyed in such a way as to make us examine what this country is all about. This work is a marvelous piece of scholarship for these resons.

Mark Naison was my professor so I'm a little biased towards the book! :) This is a great coming of age story. It's full of colorful details and hearfelt emotions. I guess knowing the author actually put all the things in the book into perspective. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in American history from a personal side. Naison uses American history to explain the things that were going around him during the time and why he did the things he did!!