The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging

by Kym Ragusa

Finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for NonfictionA memoir of astonishing delicacy and strength about race and physical beauty.

Kym Ragusa’s stunningly beautiful, brilliant African American mother turned heads as she strolled the streets of West Harlem. Ragusa’s white, working-class, Sicilian American father, who grew up only a few streets away in Italian East Harlem, had never seen anything like her. At home, their families despaired at the match, while in the streets the couple faced taunting threats from a city still racially divided.

From their volatile, short-lived pairing came a sensitive child with a filmmaker’s observant eye and the intangible gifts of an exceptional writer. Both Italian American and African American, she struggled to find a place for herself as she grew, and, in this book, she brings to life the two families and the warring, but ultimately similar, communities that defined her.

Through the stories and memories of her maternal ancestors, Ragusa explores her black family’s history, from her great-great-great-great-grandmother, who escaped from slavery in the South, to her grandmother, a journalist for the society columns of black newspapers, to her glamorous mother, who became a fashion model in Europe. Entwined with these are the stories of Ragusa’s paternal her iron-willed great-grandmother, who came to New York from a small village in the mountains of Calabria; her grandmother, the first to be born in America, who struggled to fit in both in her Italian community and later in the American suburbs; and, finally, Ragusa’s father, a Vietnam veteran.

At the center of the memoir are her two powerful grandmothers, who gave her the love and stability to grow into her own skin. Eventually, their shared care for their granddaughter forced them to overcome their prejudices. East and West Harlem, the Bronx and suburban New Jersey, rent parties and religious feste, baked yams and baked ziti—all come vividly to life in Ragusa’s sensuous memories and lyrical prose, as she evokes the joy, the pain, and the inexhaustible richness of a racially and culturally mixed heritage.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Race, Sociology, Biography Memoir

233 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. For those who are looking for the "Tragic Mulatto" in this book will be very disappointed. Mrs. Ragusa tells how that being exposed to our dual heritage has helped her find common ground and having a healthy self-esteem thanks to her Grandmothers and parents. I couldn't put down this book. I love the fact that Mrs. Ragusa didn't allow the Racism that she had encountered make her bitter instead more aware that there will always be people who don't like you because you are different.

For anyone who is Biracial themselves or have children that are Biracial, I highly recommend this touching, honest, book.

[Annelies Gerits]

Zo hartverwarmend als hartverscheurend dat het is

[Kellie Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an engaging memoir written by an African American/Italian American woman. She provides detailed descriptions of interactions with both sides of her family. Both families had strong opinions and rich traditions. There is some information about interactions between her maternal and paternal families. Although the author is the central character in the book, there are detailed histories of family members, with particular focus on both grandmothers.

Much of the story takes place in Harlem and includes interactions between various ethnic groups. Both sides of her family had feelings of betrayal when the neighborhood demographics changed. The book provides history that is relevant to current events.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opens up two different worlds (Black American and Immigrant Southern Italian), and finds the poetry in both.

A tough thing to do, to be certain, but the author pulls it off. she's the hardcore heart that resolves these two worlds; the imaginative and emotional core, that's got to make it all work.

The best memoirs do this. They take you to the very crucial thought and emotional processes that elucidate a real life and real living person in the process of not only living, but evolving.

It's a deeply moving thing. It feels heroic. Heroic in it's humility and compassion, and heroic in the way it seeks to understand and do justice to those who live in the deepest part of her heart. In all it's real complexity and humanity. Heroic in the tensile strength you have the honor of being allowed to witness up close with such access.

This is a somewhat strange time in this nation's history. Celebrating the fifty year anniversary of the March on Washington and MLK's "I Have Dream" speech. Still capable of debacle like the court spectacle arising from a situation like that of Trayvon Martin, even while there's a president, (like Ms. Ragusa), who is half black, and even while so much of the Italian community in the public eye, it seems Guiliani, Scalia, Alito) seems to have lost all connection to it's progressive working-class background and is so regressive, reactionary and elitist. And refretfully, shamefully really, thug-like and oppressive.

It seems to have lost all sense of their roots as immigrants whose families in Southern Italy were enslaved (by the Greeks) and discriminated against economically for hundreds of years, and kept uneducated and politically disenfranchised as much as blacks were in this country. {Full Disclosure: I was born in Sicily.)


Anyhow, point here is simply, we need more writers who can write about the complexity of racial identity with the literary talent Ragusa brings to the job, and I eagerly await her next book.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere I read that this is a "delicate" memoir, and I think that may be the best word for it - it is quiet and unexpected. The writer, born to an African American mother and Italian American father in the mid-60s New York City is the physical embodiment of the ties that bind two very distinct populations that dominated different parts of Harlem in the 20s and 30s. She comes to discover legacies of abuse on both sides of her family, and she grows up not with her parents but for the most part with her maternal grandmother and then her paternal grandparents. This is a really beautiful memoir, with lots of vivid images that leaves the reader marveling at her dances with words. I very much enjoyed this book, enough for it to elicit an actual review on this site.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mining her own memories, listening to the stories of family and friends, looking at old photographs, and filling in the blanks with her own speculations, while adding some historical perspective, the author reminisces and tries to piece together her formative years. As a bi-racial child of unmarried parents, African American and Italian American, she was never sure where she belonged. The tensions between the two sides of her family are evident. She is mostly identified by others as black, and is subjected to the discrimination that brought during the years before and after desegregation. This is a moving and telling memoir.

[Lillian Jane]

This young lady has written a frank and very open-minded book about her life as an Italian African-American woman. She discusses her growing-up years and shows just how hard it still is to be a biracial person here in the 21st Century. I understand her because I am one and had a strong family that surrounded me with warmth and care. I wish she had this as well when she was younger, but her truths are sound. So glad that she is still writing and discovering. Finally, she did get the warmth and caring she needed and for this I am proud of her. LJ Steele, MA

[Adriana Curto · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great memoir about identity & family. My favorite parts of the book were when she reflected back to the lives of both of her grandmothers; her African-American grandmother on her mother's side and her Italian-American grandmother from her father's. She compares their differences but highlights similarities, offering me a new perspective into identity and culture in Black Harlem and East Harlem. Beautiful, poetic writing as she unpacks multiculturalism in the US!

[mary mccarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful read

This book explores not only race and culture, but the hopes,dreams, and heartache of all girls growing up. Her life experience is very different from my own and yet her feelings of not quite fitting in and how she copes with her family and the world around her remind me of how I felt growing up. You will love this book.

[Rose Kelleher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, insightful.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give it more than a 3, perhaps 3.5.

Good read although it got mired down a little here and there.

[Aniela Smoczyńska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Musiałam to przeczytać na zajęcia, ale nie skończyłam przed egzaminem, a potem nie znalazłam w sobie dość samozaparcia.
Amerykanka jedzie na Sycylię.

[Charlene McGrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written

A very moving and honest account of being two different races. Stuck in the middle. I really enjoyed the story and how well it is written!

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

She needed more to write about.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ended abruptly

[Katelyn Unke · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️ powerful, but slow

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ragusa examines the heritage and historty of her African American mother with that of her Italian American father. Their love affair was shortlived though it produced a daughter, who relates her growing up with Miriam, her light-skinned and red-haired Black grandmother in Harlem and later with Gilda, her Calabrese-speaking grandmother in New Jersey. More interestingly, Ragusa relates, "And then there is that other thing: beauty. How with Miriam and my mother, beauty overran them. It was not a special gift, like intelligence. It was something monstrous, a thing that made them lonely, that seemed to predetermine their actions and the actions of others, a thing that set uncontrollable stories in motion, that would both precede them and follow them like a curse."

[Hiram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. A black girl's memoir of white flight. (Ragusa spends early years with black grandmother in Harlem before she moves with her Italian American family to suburban New Jersey.) Also serves as a kind of history of Harlem when Italian immigrants and African Americans were still neighbors. (Although they are very different books, in this regard it recalls Piri Thomas's Down These Mean Streets.) Ragusa is also a gifted filmmaker. I've seen two of her short experimental documentaries, "Fuori/Outside" and "Passing," and I recommend them both, esp. if you have an interest in black nonfiction film/video.

[Carol Rizzardi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this moving memoir, Kym Ragusa searches for the stories of her families, both of them, and tries to make sense of her childhood memories of a Harlem black activist grandmother and a East Harlem Italian immigrant grandmother. What comes through is not the differences as much as the commonalities of three generations of very different women and how they all come together in Ragusa.

[Mi Iadevaia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is definitely one of my favorites. Kym Regusa does an outstanding job depicting the two cultures that she belongs to (Italian-American and African American) However, growing up she had a difficult time identifying herself to either group. A book that discusses culture and race, Regusa demonstrates the struggles she experienced growing up and how she developed her own identity.

[June Centonze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir of a bi-racial woman (African American and Italian American) Her struggle to find her own identity was riveting. She was torn between two cultures. A must read for all who need to make sense of one's background. Highly recommend it.

[Rita]

recommended by Mary Louise

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a very interesting and well put together book about the struggle of this mothers life on how she struggled to get by in life.