Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Losing My Cool and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, is a 2019 New America Fellow and the recipient of a Berlin Prize. He lives in Paris with his wife and children.
"[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful
at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard
not to admire him. At a time of increasing division, his
philosophizing evinces an underlying generosity. He reaches both
ways across the aisle of racism, arguing above all for reciprocity,
and in doing so begins to theorize the temperate peace of which all
humanity is sorely in need."
*Andrew Solomon - New York Times Book Review (cover)*
"An elegant and sharp-eyed writer....In a publishing environment
where analyses of race tend to call out white fragilities and
catalogue historical injustices, Self-Portrait in Black and White
is a counterintuitive, courageous addition."
*Carlos Lozada - Washington Post*
"A fluent, captivating, if often disquieting story....We witness
Williams on a journey of both self-discovery and self-creation, and
his memoir is most valuable as a way deeper into, as opposed to a
way out of, race talk."
*Emily Bernard - Harper's*
"Thomas Chatterton Williams has the essential things a writer
needs—command of language, complexity and depth of thought, and,
maybe above all, courage. In Self-Portrait in Black and White he
sticks his neck way out in pursuit of unfashionable, necessary
truths. This book brings a blast of fresh air that will change your
thinking about race in America."
*George Packer, author of Our Man and The Unwinding*
"A gorgeously written and deeply knowledgeable account of
fatherhood, identity, and race. Tender and probing, respectful of
intellectual disagreement and of the raw emotions these subjects
can stir, it nevertheless proceeds fearlessly and rigorously toward
his own original and challenging conclusions. This is a book that
will surely provoke, inform, and move readers, regardless of where
they stand on the political and philosophical divide."
*Phil Klay, author of Redeployment*
"An elegantly rendered and trenchantly critical reflection on
‘race’ and identity—one that is perfectly suited to our time. This
is a subtle, unsettling, and brave book. Using his own journey
through life as point of departure, Thomas Chatterton Williams
launches a major assault on the conventional wisdom about racial
categorization in America. Not only does he envision a New World;
he dares to point the way toward how we all might yet arrive on
those uncharted shores."
*Glenn Loury, professor of economics and faculty fellow, Watson
Institute, Brown University*
"A brave and powerful book that I could not put down. At a time
when white supremacy is resurgent in many countries, should we
fight it by insisting on the equality of the races or the
elimination of race as a social and biological category? It is a
question that needs to be asked and a debate that needs to be
had."
*Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America*
"How does anyone confront a history that demands what they believe
about themselves is different from what’s required to love their
children? The answer, and path to it, is complicated. But here is a
son embodying the lessons of a father. Some will walk away from
this believing that black, like white, is a social construct that
needs to be abandoned—but all will walk way knowing that a father’s
love cannot be quantified by anything as whimsical as skin
complexion."
*Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon and A Question of
Freedom*
"This small book poses a very large question: how to become a self?
Williams uses his own story to remind us that inner freedom depends
on escaping the insidious categories of history and the suffocating
clichés of the present. It is a stirring call to genuine
liberation."
*Mark Lilla, author of The Once and Future Liberal*
"In fifty years, smart students will be writing senior theses
seeking to understand why anyone in the early 21st century found
anything in Self-Portrait in Black and White at all controversial.
For now, curl up with this book to join a conversation on race
about progress rather than piety, thought rather than therapy."
*John McWhorter, author of The Creole Debate*
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