Black, White, Other, Joan Steinau Lester
Black, White, Other, Joan Steinau Lester
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Black, White, Other
In Search of Nina Armstrong

Author: Joan Steinau Lester

Narrator: Bahni Turpin, Joan Steinau Lester

Unabridged: 7 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Blink

Published: 08/23/2011

Synopsis

"The tenderness and truth of the book moved my heart. As well as the enormous love." - Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple Joan Steinau Lester’s newest book looks that the emotional and social experience of Nina, a teen girl living in LA who feels caught between two worlds—the “white” world of her mother and the “black” world of her father. This nowhere land of race becomes harder to navigate when the support system her parents offered is shattered by their divorce. Now with racial tensions rising in her school and community, her white friends seeing her as too ghetto and her black friends labeling her too white, and her father pressuring her to take up her black heritage, Nina feels lost and abandoned. Even Nina’s faith seems to fail her—how can she cling to God and the songs of the church when God’s image in her seems twisted? When Nina discovers a book her father is writing about Sarah, her great-great grandmother who escaped from slavery on the Underground Railroad, Nina finds someone who can understand her feelings of being trapped in an upside-down world. But will those stories be enough to guide Nina through the pressures she now faces?

About Joan Steinau Lester

Joan Steinau Lester, Ed.D., is the author of three previous books, the most recent Mama’s Child, as well as Fire in My Soul, a civil rights biography of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Her first YA novel, Black, White, Other, was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. The former Executive Director of the Equity Institute, a national diversity consulting firm, she is also a frequent NPR commentator and print columnist.  

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lanica on October 09, 2011

I really wanted to like this book. I really did, but I just can't finish it. It's heavy handed, obvious and slow. It's the story of a mixed race girl witnessing her white mothers divorce from her black father. It could be educational, thought provoking and heart-warming. Instead there are layers upon......more

Goodreads review by Celia on July 27, 2023

Black, White, Other is definitely the type of book that would have resonated more if I had read this one when I had actually originally heard of it, when I was in middle or high school. As it was, I saw a lot of connections between this and This Song Will Save Your Life, which was another favorite i......more

Goodreads review by CW ✨ on June 27, 2017

An earnest story about a biracial teenage girl who struggles with her parent's divorce and her identity. - A heartfelt and earnest narrative on what it is like to be biracial - explores identity, history, perceptions of the media. - About a girl who is trying to make sense of who she is - as she quick......more

Goodreads review by Nadine on March 01, 2017

...I find three whole chapters of MISS SARAH ARMSTRONG: ON THE RUN. Sarah, who might actually be the only person on the planet I can relate to. The only problem: she's dead. Nina's black father and white mother have decided to divorce, a racial uproar is spreading through Nina's hometown, and it seem......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on March 16, 2017

Nina Armstrong's dad is black. Her mom is white. And they just split up. Nina now lives with her mom in the same house she grew up in, but her brother Jimi lives with their dad in a very different neighborhood. Also, Nina just started ninth grade, and her best friend has been acting oddly, hanging w......more

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