2 out of 4 stars
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Relationships are hard. It's hard enough to find someone that you can get along with for any amount of time, let alone someone you love and can stand beside for the rest of your life. Sadly, those things get even more challenging when racial differences are brought into the mix. Regardless of how the two people in the relationship feel about race, family members, friends, or even random strangers may have vocal opinions about it.
My White Fiance: Deep Rooted Racism by Yaffa Sauda Lawson explores this topic through Yaffa's first serious relationship. In 1993, at 17 years old, Yaffa put an ad in the newspaper to find a relationship. Following a string of disgusting replies, she finds one that she deems worthy of a chance. Karl was 24 at the time so he didn't want to say they were "dating", but the two went out numerous times and eventually things became serious. But the more people found out about the relationship, the more difficult it became to hold their relationship together, and not for the reasons I originally guessed.
First of all, I was really shocked by how short the book was. Amazon says the book is 59 pages long, but it only took up 57 screens on my PC Kindle app. Typically that'd be more like 40-45 pages at most. Secondly, there were a LOT of errors within those pages. By the 15th page, I'd already counted 13 errors, and I saw countless more throughout the rest of the book as well.
Then there's the subject matter itself. I've been blessed to only have a handful of relationships in my life. I met all three women that I had relationships with online, and while the second led to a failed marriage, the third has led to a happy, healthy relationship that's still going strong 11 years later. Perhaps because I've never spent time in the dating pool, I can't relate at all to the things that Yaffa and Karl went through. They argued over the craziest things! Karl was so mad that Yaffa used lots of pepper that he gave her the silent treatment for 5 minutes. Yaffa was mad at one point that he hadn't told his father about her even though they were still "just friends" at that point and she was only 17. Worst of all, they got into a heated argument when Yaffa's mom joked that he looked like the leader of the KKK and part of his reply included "Being white is great!" Maybe I'm just far more picky about the people I spend time with, but I would've written someone off if one or two of these things happened, let alone all three. Heck, Karl still had a girlfriend when they got together, and when Karl asked Yaffa to get a job, she tried to become a stripper!
I did appreciate the moments where the book actually spoke about race. That was why I picked this book up in the first place, after all. Sadly, I felt that the book was really lacking in depth when these topics came up. One of the biggest things that caused a rift between them was when Yaffa thought she was pregnant and they were wondering what color the child would be. Karl and his friend had agreed that if the child looked white, it should be raised white, and Yaffa disagreed. This is a huge, heated topic in the world today, so I was hoping for some in-depth thoughts from Yaffa's point of view. Why should a child who looks white be "treated black", and what does it mean to "treat a child black" in the first place? If their child looked black, should it be "treated white"? What's the difference between the two as far as parenting is concerned? Yaffa wrote: "My point being is that not all black people are broke, busted, and disgusted; and that is the mind-set they seem to have about the entire black race." I wanted to read a whole chapter about this! Instead, there's maybe a page or two at most throughout the whole book that discusses serious racial issues aside from a handful of family members and friends being unhappy with their relationship. In the end, I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that most of the problems they faced weren't related to race at all.
Overall, My White Fiance: Deep Rooted Racism isn't bad, but it needs a lot of polish. It was plain to see that this book wasn't edited well, let alone professionally. It was remarkable that Yaffa managed to remember what kinds of food they ate where and when, yet didn't go very deep about the hard-hitting topics that I expected to find. She treads the water and mentions the racial issues they faced, but I really wanted to read a lot more about her opinions and thoughts on the topics. I'll give the book 2 out of 4 stars and recommend it only to those who enjoy brief, light, autobiographical books about relationships that deal with differences in race, status (Karl had graduated college and had a rich doctor for a father), and age.
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My White Fiance: Deep Rooted Racism
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