Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery

"A gripping memoir from a BC Vancouver Sun journalist who was born to a West African mother, and then adopted as a small boy and raised by a white evangelical family. This is his searing account of being raised by fundamentalists. He grows up as a black kid who had his racial identity mocked and derided all the while being made to participate in the religious fervor of his mother's holy roller church. The religious brainwashing is of course dislocating and crushing for the boy as he grows into a teenager and is consistently abused for being black. He must navigate and survive zealotry, paranoia and prejudice. This is a narrative that amplifies a voice rarely heard: the child at the centre of an interracial adoption. This powerful memoir invites readers to de-centre whiteness as its narrator learns to do the same and considers the controversial adoption practice from the perspective of the families being ripped apart, and the children being stripped of their culture, in order to fill demand for babies in evangelical households. As Harry grows up after a lifetime of internalized anti-blackness, he begins to redefine his terms and reconsider his history. His journey from white cult to black consciousness culminates in a happy reunion with his biological mother, who waited 25 years to tell him the truth: she wanted to keep him. Harrison Mooney's wry, evocative prose style brings accessibility and levity to a deeply personal tale of identity: a black coming-of-age narrative set in a world with little love for black boys. This is a most timely memoir about race, religion and displacement."--… (more)