Part IV, The Incorruptible Simplicity of Being, A String of Crystalline Parables, Chapter 12, On Being the Object of Property Summary and Analysis

The slave owners of Williams's great-great grandmother are lawyers and so her mother has joked that she has law "in her blood." Williams acknowledges this truth in a complex sense. She notes that her mother wants her to reclaim her heritage but that in reality she is devaluing herself. Nonetheless, Williams takes having her "blood secret" to Harvard with both pride and shame.

Williams shares a story about a fifteen-year-old black girl who is pregnant with her third child. Her mother has a hysterectomy as a form of birth control because it is recommended by a white doctor. She asks a doctor whether this was...