The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir

by Jennifer Baszile

Praise for The Black Girl Next Door

"Powerful and provocative."

—Dame Magazine

"A story for the ostensibly post-racial Obama era."

—New York Times

"An absorbing look behind the façade of one black family's striving for integration and the American dream."

—Booklist

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Jennifer Baszile on the
Tavis Smiley Show

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An interview with Jennifer Baszile

The Black Girl Next Door

A powerful memoir of a black girl's coming of age in an exclusive Southern California suburb in the 1970s and '80s.

At age three, when Jennifer Baszile's family relocated to predominately white Palos Verdes, she formed the questions that would define her girlhood: "Why did we move here? What am I doing here?"

"We love the ocean view," her parents would nervously reply. Or, "The schools are really outstanding."

But Jennifer knew they weren't telling the whole story. If her school was so great, why, when she won a footrace in first grade, did her teacher agree with a classmate that blacks "have something in their feet...Read More

THE BLACK GIRL NEXT DOOR: a Memoir by Jennifer Baszile

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