Research Catalog

Title

Shame on me : an anatomy of race and belonging / Tessa McWatt.

Author

McWatt, Tessa

Publication

• Toronto : Random House Canada, [2019]
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

230 pages ; illustrations; 21 cm

Summary

"Tessa McWatt has been called Susie Wong, Pocahontas, and "black bitch," and has been judged not black enough by people who assume she straightens her hair. Now, through a close examination of her own body--nose, lips, hair, skin, eyes, ass, bones, and blood--which holds up a mirror to the way culture reads all bodies, she asks why we persist in thinking in terms of race today when racism is killing us. Her grandmother's family fled southern China for British Guiana after her great uncle was shot in his own dentist's chair during the First Sino-Japanese War. McWatt is made of this woman and more: those who arrived in British Guiana from India as indentured labour and those who were brought from Africa as cargo to work on the sugar plantations; colonists and those whom colonialism displaced. How do you tick a box on a census form or job application when your ancestry is Scottish, English, French, Portuguese, Indian, Amerindian, African, and Chinese? How do you finally answer a question first posed to you in grade school: "What are you?" And where do you find a sense of belonging in a supposedly "post-racial" world where shadism, fear of blackness, identity politics, and call-out culture vie with each other noisily, relentlessly, and still lethally? Shame on Me is a personal and powerful exploration of history and identity, colour and desire from a writer who, having been plagued with confusion about her race all her life, has at last found kinship and solidarity in story."--

Subject

• McWatt, Tessa
• Racially mixed people > Race identity
• Racism
• Race discrimination
• Post-racialism
• Race awareness
• Human skin color > Social aspects
• Racially mixed people > Canada > Biography
• Authors, Canadian (English) > Biography
• Racially mixed people
• Canada

Genre/Form

Biographies.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 218-226).

Contents

Hypothesis -- Experiment -- "What Are You?" -- Analysis -- Findings -- Double Helix.

Call Number

Sc D 21-259

ISBN

• 9780735277434
• 0735277435

LCCN

2019394434

OCLC

1110437013

Author

McWatt, Tessa, author.

Title

Shame on me : an anatomy of race and belonging / Tessa McWatt.

Publisher

Toronto : Random House Canada, [2019]

Copyright Date

©2019

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Creator/Contributor Characteristics

Gender group: Women

Nationality/regional group: Canadians

Occupational/field of activity group: University and college faculty members

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 218-226).

Local Note

AUTH: UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA.

Research Call Number

Sc D 21-259