On Race
Real American: A Memoir
A personal narrative of growing up Black and biracial
Winner of the 2018 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award
Reviewed by the New York Times
Real American is the story of Julie’s journey from self-loathing to self-love as a Black and biracial woman living in predominantly white spaces. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows how microaggressions, discrimination, and outright racism can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. In sharing her path to self-acceptance, Julie also expresses the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other."
A peek inside…
“Where are you from?”
“Here.”
“No, I mean, where are you from from?”
As a child growing up in the seventies and early eighties in New York, Wisconsin, and Northern Virginia, there was something about my skin color and hair texture that snagged the attention of white children and adults. Their need to make sense of me—to make something of sense out of nonsensical me—was pressing. My existence was a ripple in an otherwise smooth sheet. They needed to iron it down.
[The truth is, I’m not really from here.]
[The truth is, that’s not what they were asking.]
Talks on Real American
What it means to be Black in white spaces
Watch Julie share her experience as a Black and biracial woman growing up in white spaces and explain how she found self-acceptance through the healing power of community.
More books by Julie
On adulting
Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
Being an adult, it turns out, is not about any particular checklist; it is, instead, a process, one you can get progressively better at over time―becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and gaining the knowhow to keep going. Once you begin to practice it, being an adult becomes the most complicated yet also the most abundantly rewarding and natural thing. And Julie Lythcott-Haims is here to help readers take their turn.
On parenting
How to Raise an Adult
A New York Times best-seller. In this provocative anti-helicopter parenting manifesto, Julie highlights the ways overparenting harms children, their parents, and society at large—and offers practical alternative strategies for raising kids to be self-sufficient, resilient, and successful.
ON WRITING
Writing Memoir
This little book of writing prompts from The Writer’s Grotto, where Julie was a member, opens with a foreword by Julie that offers pointers for crafting a compelling narrative from your own experiences. The rest of the book consists of prompts and space to write, providing opportunities to reframe aspects of your life in thoughtful and interesting ways.