Emily Bernard’s highly personal essays draw from life with her husband, adopted daughters, extended family and in-laws. She is black, her husband is white, and her circle includes a woman who confesses that Bernard is her only black friend. Race, the morphing yet consistently troubling question in American history, is unavoidable in Bernard’s life and present on every page. What troubles her through much of Black is the Body is “how hard it is to tell the whole truth.” Storytelling and narratives are crucial yet inevitably omit as much as they include. She has little patience for the buzzword “diversity,” calling it “a way out of—as opposed to a way into—complex and textured conversations about race.” Black is the Body is hopeful in comparing the experiences of past generations with those of her daughters who have a better opportunity to take pleasure in difference than their predecessors.
