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‘Real American’ Author on Life Obstacles for Biracial, Black Children

October 30, 2017 by Kevin McKeever

Race and racism are rarely easy topics for parents to address with their children, Julie Lythcott-Haims hopes she can help by sharing her experience as a biracial black girl, woman, daughter and mother raising two biracial children in modern America.

Lythcott-Haims, who first came to the attention of the parenting world with her 2015 New York Times bestselling anti-helicopter parenting book How to Raise an Adult, appears on the latest edition of The Modern Dad Podcast to discuss her latest book, the well-received memoir, Real American.

She talks the steps all of us can take to support and understand the perspectives of others, and offers advice for parents raising children of color.

Lythcott-Haims, the daughter of an African-American father and white British mother, examines her life in a combination of prose and poetry that creates “a bold, impassioned memoir” both “riveting and deeply felt” and “sheds fresh light on race and discrimination in American society,” according to Publisher’s Weekly.

“The author also poignantly describes the assorted indignities she has endured, from attending an event at a child’s school where she saw characters in blackface to resisting a Stanford colleague, a woman who fondled her hair in a meeting. She also writes affectionately about her white husband of many years — though she wonders at times what it would have been like to be married to a black man,” wrote Kirkus Review. The book also contains “many potent and painful reminders that we have a long, long way to go regarding race and identity.”

Lythcott-Haims is a graduate of Stanford University, Harvard Law School and California College of the Arts. She lives in Silicon Valley with her partner of more than 25 years, their two teenagers, and her mother. She spent 14 years as an administrator at Stanford, working as associate dean for student affairs in the Law School, assistant to the president, and dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at various times.

This episode of the podcast concludes with The Parents’ Phrase Book author and Los Angeles Dads Group member Whit Honea, a white male raising two white males, sharing the conversation he is having with his boys about race.

julie lythcott-haims real american memoir

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Filed Under: ethnicity / race Tagged With: books, Julie Lythcott-Haims, Modern Dads Podcast, podcasts, racism

About Kevin McKeever

City Dads Group Editor Kevin McKeever runs Write On, Kevin Communications when not being an at-home dad to three: boy, girl and canine. He wrote a two-time nationally award-winning newspaper column, blogs at Always Home and Uncool and tweets as @homeanduncool. His work has been featured in USA Today, Canada’s Globe and Mail, the New York Daily News and landfills worldwide.

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