RATING: 0 STARS (but cannot give less than 1)
DNF @ 10%
(Review Not on Blog)

While I am interested in finding out more about this story, and the craziness, I could not read this book beyond 10%. For me, I like to read/know how and why people do the things they do, no matter how uncomfortable it can be. However, the tone and writing was just a huge turn off so I am going to pass and maybe watch the Netflix documentary.

***I received an eARC from NETGALLEY***

This book makes me very uncomfortable. I did not finish reading this book, and felt as though many of the claims this author is making were playing up her role as a victim when often she should not have been victimizing herself. I have experienced white people making these kinds of claims, but it still continues to make me exceedingly uncomfortable.

I read this book in an attempt to open my mind to views that are different from mine, and I was glad I did. The writing is well-executed and easy to read. The big question for anyone who has heard about Rachel Dolezal's story would be whether race is a social construct or not. As I reader, I am not sure how to answer that question but I did like getting the opportunity to read her side of the story.

I was excited to see Ms. Dolezal share her side of a controversial and polarizing story. After reading her book I think I have a better understanding of the life challenges that made Ms. Dolezal find a natural haven within the African-American community. The bigger issue her book addresses is the real definition of race. Is it based on melanin content, family connections or the space you occupy in a community of your choosing? I chose this book as an important addition to my Women's History Month post because my personal definition of feminism is the desire to want all women to have the right to live as they want, without judgment, just as men live. True inclusion can only be attained when we allow all women to have a voice-even if it may run counter to our own. Ms. Dolezal's voice and explanations are valid and add to the multi-dimensional race relations narrative.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did not finish In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. I hate even having to read it, then rate it without following through. When I don't finish a book, no matter how badly I want to, I can't help but feel as if I failed the writer. After all, the author did take their time to tell a story, get it edited, and bravely put it out there to be scrutinized. What could possibly be scarier and here comes someone like me, a so-called reviewer, doesn't even finish the book and has the nerve to give it a rating.

Yeah! I'm looking at you people who didn't even read this book... or get at least 67% in as I did and still felt that it was ok to leave a 1-star rating just because you don't like her. Shame on you.

So... shame on me too right? Of course... but for an entirely different reason.

Yes my 2-star rating adds to the fray of poor ratings for this title, but at least I gave it a go. I at least fired up my Kindle in the hopes of providing an honest review for my Advanced Readers Copy. I remember being so excited when I was approved through Netgalley to review because I was/am one of the few black people who remained untainted by feelings of rage or disgust for this woman. I actually didn't understand why the black community was so up in arms...

After reading a little more than half of In Full Color, I too was a little... upset.

Rachel Dolezal opens up to us by sharing her upbringing with us. Dolezal had it rough. I won't deny that. She recounts her childhood living in a home of fanatical Christians who subjected her to hard labor and abuse no child (or person) should ever have to endure...

Let me stop there because I'd like to mention how her parents, Larry and Ruthanne (whom she never refers to as Mom or Dad) were devout Christian Fundamentalists that Dolezal paints as the most ruthless pair of dotes ever. They made their children work as soon as they could walk. Not only did they subject them to hours in the fields in order to keep the family business running, they treated Rachel like the illustration her name signified.

I was all ears. Reading her story made me sympathize with her. I even gave her a benefit of a doubt when she admits that as a child, she drew her self in darker shade after having been introduced to people of color through National Geographic. I figured, ok, just because a white child's favorite princess is Tiana, she doesn't necessarily identify as a black princess. It just is what it is...

But when she likened her experience (not in totality) to slavery, my eyes rolled. I mean... really rolled. Yes, Dolezal's childhood was fucked up. Her parents were fucked. And remained that way the entirety of what I read, but slavery, servitude, and her experience still remain very far apart on the spectrum of relativity. DCFS existed. There were teachers to tell. Sure, I know it's not that simple or black and white, but come on.

After having survived that one hiccup, Rachel Dolezal continues to tell her story. And, I was still very much so interested. Essentially, I was hoping to be the one review in a sea of 1-stars to give In Full Color at least a 3-star rating. I still believed myself to be on the fence, maintaining an open mind to this woman and her journey to becoming... no... identifying as "black".

Before going to college, her parents adopted three black children in the hopes of supplementing their income. As a teen, who already loved blacks and their culture, pretty much raised them and tried to protect them from her parents. She learned to braid their hair, teach them of their history (since Montana was lacking in diversity), and coaxed them through racist happenings (both apparent and beautifully cloaked) brought on by her parents and the primarily white community they lived in.

Part of me began to think that she suffered from an extreme case of white guilt and she needed to be our white hope. The other part believed that she really did see herself as an oppressed person and history has proven over and over again that no one can be more oppressed than the black American.

In college, she was accepted by the few blacks there were and even married a black man. She had a black son... and adopted another... I'm grazing over these parts because I get it. As a youth, I wasn't that cool. I talked "white", was a nerd who loved to read, did not have the cool clothes, and the only friends who accepted me wholeheartedly were white kids. Up until 7th grade, my best friends were white and it didn't bother me that I wasn't accepted by other black children.

Sorry, I must digress... with two weeks left in 7th grade, my 8th grade cousin was killed. He was wildly popular in his middle school and all of a sudden I was accepted in the black crowd. My point in mentioning this is because I was finally accepted by people who looked like me. I was amongst people who shared the same idols I did. Heroes that had our same skin color such as Whitney Houston and Patti Labelle. I found another me that had been suppressed for a long time. A me that didn't have to sugar coat the story of the Best Buy manager following me throughout the store or how I was constantly asked "can I help you?". Many chalk that up to great customer service. The children who now accepted me knew better.

That's why I had to stop with Rachel Dolezal and her tale of woe. I'm sure loving black culture is in her heart and she doesn't mean to ignite such... hate towards her. But I also see someone who hasn't found herself or what she's looking for.

What I've learned in the last few months after having put this book down, and reading comments on any news article with a hint of racial bias is: being black is not something you wear. It's not a kinky, curly fro you place atop your head in an effort to mask your true identity. Being black, African American in this country is not some cloak that magically disappears when the time is right. If that were the case, there would be no Philando Castile, or a "Black Lives Matter" campaign. We blacks don't need a great white hope, nor do we want to wallow in our own woe-is-me tale. Obviously, no one is listening. They say get over it. Slavery ended... get over it. You had Affirmative Action so get over it. Even the "thug" rappers or "lazy" athletes that disrespect our anthem are making millions. Just GET OVER IT already!

What's most insulting about Rachel Dolezal is that she can move freely between the color identity she wakes up that morning feeling unlike the blacks she identifies with. I get that she was hoping to start a discussion about being trans-racial but no matter how white I feel or identify being, I simply, could not ever, possibly be white. My melanin doesn't allow it. The greatest performer in ever, Michael Jackson, tried and failed miserably. When he died, he was seen as at least a black man.

Copy provided by Benbella Books via Netgalley

Really I should have left the DRC sit where it was, which was Net Galley, but thank you just the same to them and BenBella Books. For the most accurate and articulate write-up on this bizarre woman and her mission to become Black, go here:

http://www.thestranger.com/features/2...

It was actually not Dolezal's book, which equivocates and rationalizes unconscionable behavior, that clued me into exactly why African-Americans don't think this woman is funny. It should have been obvious from the start: the one and only thing, seriously, that Caucasian people cannot ever, ever, ever take from Black folk is exactly that; their Blackness. In twining her grasping fingers around an ethnicity to which she was not born and can never fully understand or appreciate, she committed the ultimate cultural appropriation.

I knew all of this before I grabbed the DRC. The sole thing that I want to know when I start reading is how this gutsy, warped individual explains having sued Howard University, an historically Black university, for discriminating against her for being White. I slogged through her prose recounting her early life and padding her personal experience with tidbits of Black history that I already knew and that read like cribbed lecture notes from the African-American history classes she taught at one point. Tragic childhood. Black brothers and sister, adopted. And so help me, I still cannot understand why she is unable to simply say she comes from a mixed family; it's not like she's the only one, for heaven's sake. But anyway, I skimmed and persevered until I found this court case, which at first I nearly did not see, because she refers to it as a gender discrimination case and then--as a FOOTNOTE--adds that her attorney felt adding race would strengthen the case.

So, poof! Not her fault. She is entirely passive; it is her lawyer's choice, and she, a mere mote in the wind, powerless to change the terms of the suit. And with that, her narrative moves on.

Having seen this, any small remaining chance that the woman is merely sick and misguided rather than a calculating striver vanished. Stick a fork in me; I'm done.

I'm not really sure how to rate this book. On the one hand, I found it to be quite boring and uncomfortable as she details parts of her life that I have no interest in reading about. On the other hand, it is interesting to read about what it feels like being demonised in the media and having someone who has been through that try to explain what happened in their words. This book also contained some information about race relations in America that I wasn't aware of, so I appreciated that angle. However, on the whole, this book was too long, poorly structured and the author came across as someone who liked to regularly play the victim card. I'm not saying that she's never been victimised, I'm just saying that her way of telling her story is alienating because it focuses so heavily on how she how many injustices there have been in her life without exploring any of her own responsibilities. If this book was edited properly, I might even suggest to someone who is already familiar with and interested in Rachel's story to read it.

Full disclosure: I don't like Rachel Dolezal.

Despite my personal misgivings, I am a knowledge-seeker so when the opportunity to read Ms. Dolezal's book presented itself, I took it. I even went into the venture with an open mind, ready to hear her side of things before passing judgment. Unfortunately, reading the book only solidified my feelings that Ms. Dolezal lives in a world of her own creation and feels persecuted by those outside of it (which is nearly everyone).

I will say that Dolezal had a horrific childhood and endured more than any child should. However, some of the claims in her book leave me dumbfounded. She highlights growing up in rural Montana where there were no black children. She didn't even know such a person existed until she was given a National Geographic magazine as a young teen. Yet at the same time she knew she was inherently black. She compares doing manual labor on her family farm to being a chattel slave which is preposterous. This goes on and on throughout the book and rather than presenting a well-rounded view of society, it comes off as whiney and at times delusional.

Regardless of whether Dolezal is delusional is beside the point here. What the book does present is a well-rounded view of her experience. I was able to see exactly how she came to believe what she does and it is clear that her identity crisis started from a very young age. Her story is a very interesting psychological study in that sense this is a very good read.

Storms Reback is the only saving grace in this whole thing as the book is actually very well written. I've argued before that good writing can make a terrible book readable and it holds true for this one as well. I wouldn't have finished it otherwise. Rather than paying for the book, just read some news stories on Dolezal and you'll have all you need to understand her.

I live in WA state not far from where Rachel was living her lie. I can't help but think she has a mental problem and though she says she was helping the black community to me she did more to hurt it. This book is just her trying to justify what she did. I couldn't even finish the book which I highly doubt she wrote herself.