Off-White: A Memoir

Gunst writes with a clarity and honesty that belie the racial paradigm that was Richmond and the South.... This is a triumph of the spirit. - Louisville Courier-Post Poignant and emotionally wrenching at times, Gunst successfully navigates the positives and negatives of her familial history. - Upscale Laurie Gunst writes with authority about the complicated relationship between southern Jews and African Americans. Off-White perfectly captures the South in the latter half of the twentieth century and brings to mind the work of Truman Capote. -Alfred Uhry, author of Driving Miss Daisy Laurie Gunst is the youngest child in a well-to-do southern family of German-Jewish descent. Her primary source of care and love is Rhoda, a great-hearted African American woman who as caregiver presided over three generations of the Gunst family amidst the vicious racism of the Jim Crow South. The intimate relationship between caregiver and child is strong. So is Laurie's shame at aspects of her family's racially-intolerant past: an ancestor fought for the South in the Civil War and another cooperated with the Klan in fomenting a race riot. As a vulnerable child she witnesses firsthand the unfairness of segregation that consigns the woman who cares for her to a lesser status. Laurie's outrage at racial discrimination sets her apart from other white southerners, even her father. Love for Rhoda marks Laurie indelibly, just as it did her mother before her. Ultimately, she acknowledges Rhoda as a spiritual mother who shaped her life as much as her biological mother.