Mostly White

Brutal and a Powerful Tale

Author- Alison Hart

Genre- Fiction

Pages- 174

Generation after generation, the members of a mixed raced family, goes through unexplainable trauma and brutal treatment in the American society. Set in Maine, in the early 1890’s to 1980’s, Alison Hart’s ‘Mostly White’ narrates the lives of four generations of mixed race women who went through equal hardships. Starting with Emma, a young black girl, who experiences sexual abuse at a residential school for Indian children. She was looked down upon, beaten and whipped at the school. But this brutal treatment doesn’t end with Emma. For generations, Emma’s daughter and her grand children went through unspeakable trauma, each struggling to survive amongst the Whites. Beatings, betrayals, abuses, drunkenness, deaths, these women have went through enough, so much that they were on the edge of becoming a monster themselves.

Each of the story was so intense and heartbreaking that I had to keep the book down and gather my thoughts together before proceeding further. However, this book will show you the harsh reality of racial classification that Black women and even men faced in a White privileged society.

Coming to the narration, I had a hard time with Emma’s storyline. The book is written in first person narrative and as such, Emma who could speak limited English, made it a little difficult for me to understand certain parts. I had to re-read the first three pages twice to get the storyline. For a book of just 174 pages, the pace was a bit slow. And these two factors will affect my rating for this book. Speaking about the plot, I think I haven’t read a book this good in a while. Taking into consideration the issue that have been spoken about here, it’s very difficult to make the audience feel the same emotion that you felt while writing this book. And Hart did a commendable job here. I felt every emotion, I felt the rage, the sadness, the happiness along with the characters. I could connect to them and feel their pain. The book affected me so much that it took me a long time to pour my thoughts in here. I don’t know if my review does justice to this book but, I would recommend you all to pick this up ASAP. You wouldn’t wanna miss out on this.

My rating- 4.4/5