White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing

In White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing by Gail Lukasik, the author tells the story of solving the long mystery of her mother’s ethnicity.  

Lukasik’s mother was a Creole (a person of mixed ethnicity) in New Orleans.  During World War Two, she married a GI and moved north, passing for white. The author discovers her mother’s secret accidentally, and in the process, learns how much of a social construct race and ethnicity actually is; especially for those people who straddle the line between two “races.”

Lukasik tells a fascinating, and distinctly American tale, which has all too often has been expunged from our history.