Join us Sun., Oct. 8, 4 pm as Julie Lythcott-Haims discusses and signs her new memoir Real American (Henry Holt, hb., 288 pp., $27).
Real American is a fearless and powerful memoir. Bringing a brisk, poetic sensibility to her prose, Lythcott-Haims stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color.
The only child of an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called “micro” aggressions in addition to blunt-force insults can puncture a person’s inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American also expresses, through Lythcott-Haims’s path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered “the other.”
Julie Lythcott-Haims is the bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, which The New York Times called a “must-read for every parent who senses that there is a healthier and saner way to raise children.” She served as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to the undergraduate experience. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, their two teenagers, and her mother.
