Summary

In the introduction, Irving explains that she struggled for many years to truly understand racism and its effects on both an individual and a structural level. This book is a record of that struggle and her subsequent efforts to educate herself on the subject.

Part I, “Childhood in White” (1) begins with Chapter 1, “What Wasn't Said” (3). Irving recalls an event from childhood in which her mother told her that Native Americans had been devastated as a people by alcoholism. She wishes her mother had explained to her the wider context of their suffering—the oppression, displacement, and violence perpetrated by European settlers.

In Chapter 2, “Family Values” (7), Irving recalls growing up in Winchester, Massachusetts in a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) family that took pride in being the descendants of America's earliest settlers. Her father was a lawyer and her mother stayed at home with Irving...