The black notebooks

by Toi Derricotte

"All my life I have passed invisibly into the white world, and all my life I have felt that sudden and alarming moment of consciousness there, of remembering I am black. It may feel like emerging too quickly from deep in the ocean, or touching an electric fence, or like a deer paralyzed in the headlights of an oncoming car," writes Toi Derricotte, a light-skinned black woman and accomplished poet. This exquisitely written work began as sketchy journal entries over twenty years ago when Derricotte moved into an all-white neighborhood near New York City. "I wanted to capture the language of self-hate, the pain of re-emerging thought and buried memory and consciousness." The Black Notebooks is an intimate record of the author's encounters with family, neighbors, friends, students, and colleagues where she is forced to question what it means to be a black woman living in a racially divided world.