Waking Up White is the text I've been waiting for, looking for.  I've taught "multicultural texts" for years and  prodded students to identify, describe, and understand different viewpoints in their reading; we also try to identify and examine the lenses each of us brings to the table.  Irving's book helps them more naturally carry this academic learning into their own lives.  An engaging personal memoir, it invites students to identify with the author.   It gives them a model for interior awareness as well as a lens to begin looking at the acculturation of white people and of dominant groups: they begin to "get it" at a deeper level.   White students, students of color, American-born, and international students begin Finding THEMSELVES in the Story of Race.

 

Ms. Lark Hammond

Phillips Exeter Academy, Lamont Professor of English Emerita

Exeter Diversity Institute for Teachers, co-director