About this item
Weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis, Same Family, Different Colors explores the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States.Colorism and color bias - the preference for or presumed superiority of people based on the lighter color of their skin - is a pervasive but rarely openly discussed phenomenon, one that is centuries old and continues today. In Same Family, Different Colors, journalist Lori Tharps, the mother of three mixed-race children with three distinct skin colors, uses her own family as a starting point to explore how skin-color difference is dealt with in African American, Latino, Asian American, and mixed-race families and communities. Along with intimate and revealing stories and anecdotes from dozens of diverse people from across the United States, Tharps adds a historical overview and a contemporary cultural critique. Same Family, Different Colors is a solution-seeking journey to the heart of identity politics, so this more subtle "cousin to racism," in the author's words, will be acknowledged, understood, and debated.
About the Author
Lori L. Tharps is the author of two award-winning non-fiction books, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America and Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain. Her debut novel, Substitute Me was released in August 2010. Her fourth book, Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America's Diverse Families (Beacon) hit store shelves in October, 2016.
When Tharps is not writing books, she teaches journalism classes at Temple University, where she is an associate professor in the School of Media and Communication. She also continues to write for magazines, newspapers and online media outlets.
Although it sounds rather boring, Tharps' greatest pleasure in life is reading. Other people's books of course, not her own.
