Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room

by Dawn Downey

How does a black woman maintain her sense of self, when most of her friends are white? In public spaces and private, Dawn Downey is under attack by an onslaught of microaggressions. She struggles to find balance between personal relationships and personal integrity. In the process, she unconsciously takes on characteristics of the privileged. But after a photo of a racist toy shows up in her social media feed, she discovers her black power.

102 pages, Paperback

Published October 8, 2020

About the author

Dawn Downey writes essays about her journey through everyday life. The question she strives to answer: How does a sensitive elder woman of color thrive in an insensitive, white-centered, male dominated, youth-oriented culture? The author of multiple books, she also writes “Dawn Downey’s Teachable Moments,” a Substack newsletter. Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room earned Book of the Year Finalist honors from the Independent Author Network.

Downey lives with her husband in Kansas City, Missouri.

Learn more at DawnDowneyBlog.com.

Reviews

[Carrie Lahain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this collection of essays in a single sitting. Dawn Downey has a breezy, low-key writing style that invites the reader in and lets them get nice and comfy--except that the experiences she shares are not comfortable at all. Not for her. Not for us as we travel with her through what should be the simple ordinary day-to-day of a middle-class life in middle America. Only it's a world I don't recognize or might only experience in a dream. Thanksgiving dinner where the guests wear the faces of my friends, but the tone turns decidedly unfriendly. A trip to a hardware store that has me looking over my shoulder, sure I'm being followed as I peruse aisles of paint thinner and toilet plungers. The expected sanctuary of a yoga studio becomes a place of isolation, rejection, and hurt. I still hear the lingering echo of the last line of "Comfort Food", probably my favorite piece--"White Privilege: the ability to attribute mangled pie to bad service."

Though Blindsided is not easy on the heart or the conscience, Dawn Downey doesn't leave readers alone in our discomfort. She's right there with us, questioning her own reactions, her own judgments and assumptions. And she's so darn funny, which doesn't cure the tension but makes it bearable, allows us enough air to hang there, suspended between where we are as humans and where we wish we were. Not an easy space to inhabit, but it has a beauty, too. Beauty and plenty of hope.

[Billy Buttons · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE WISHING SHELF BOOK AWARDS
12th December 2021
TITLE: BLINDSIDED, Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room
AUTHOR: Dawn Downey
Star Rating: 5

To Sum Up
‘A superbly written and very honest account of what it feels like to be a black woman in a white community. Highly recommended!” The Wishing Shelf

REVIEW
I think it best if I start by telling you ‘I’m not black.’ But, saying that, I don’t think this memoir is particularly for black readers. In fact, if I was to recommend it, I’d recommend it to readers of all skin colours, as it offers everybody an insight into how it feels to be a black woman in a white community. Not only that, it calls on readers to think about how they act and how destructive underlying racism can be.
In terms of the prose, the author is adept at pulling the reader into her world and feeling what she’s feeling. There’s a relaxed, chatty sort of feel to it which I very much enjoyed – and there’s a sprinkling of humour which adds to her story whilst never undermining the awfulness of what she faced.
So, can I recommend this book? Totally! Who to? If you feel an outsider in the community you live in (not just in term of skin colour but also, say, a disability), I think you will find this book compelling. Also, if you have an interest in racism, particularly of the covert, hidden kind, and how it can slowly destroy people, you will find this book an eye-opener. The author is so very talented and her story so very ‘real’, it’s difficult to think of anybody who wouldn’t learn from it.

A Wishing Shelf Review
www.thewsa.co.uk

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Blindsided felt like sitting on a porch with Dawn Downey, shuffling through the kinds of stories that allow an afternoon pass without notice. Her writing is so inviting and conversational, taking the reader by the hand and showing then a situation as plain as can be. The directness, the ordinary of these interactions, highlights the micro-aggressions embedded in them. She asks the lingering questions, she interrogates intention. She explains her hurt and considers who is accountable. She recalls moments of being a bystander, too frozen with grief and fear to act. And threaded through these essays is the larger truth of inherited trauma: how it informs our actions and understanding of self.

In one essay, “Final Report on the Dawn Downey Diversity Committee,” the writer seems to call herself out for the lack of diversity in her own life, bringing into question her own authenticity telling her story in this way. It struck me oddly, as if she was trying to beat others to the punch and almost taking away the validity from herself. It’s tongue in cheek in a way that’s meant to make the reader uncomfortable with assumptions; so in that way it’s serves its purpose. Downey’s journey in these essays, esp. in Part 2, gets into the murkiness of identity / audience/ writer’s voice.

These essays are more like vignettes, most of them no more than a few pages, and the collection is a quick read. Downey moves quickly through time/space, shifts that sometimes felt very intentional and other times I had to retrace the steps. I’m overall so grateful for the reading experience and Downey’s generosity in sharing this book with me.

If you like This is Major by Shayla Lawson, you might like Blindsided.


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[Marcia Meier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and searing collection of essays on the micro-aggressions suffered on a regular basis by women (and men) of color in a white-dominant society, even for a black woman who is married to a white man and lives in a seemingly tolerant community. Downey's prose is butter smooth and deeply affecting. Highly recommend.

[Amber Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blindsided by Dawn Downey address’s identity, microaggression, and colorism from a humorous yet serious perspective. Everything Downey writes resonates with me as I, too, am a “high yellow” who struggled fitting in the Black community and among Whites because of my darkness. I also know what it means to be invisible in White settings and the hurt that entails even though I pretended it did not matter. Yes, Blindsided spoke to me. And, although Downey uses humor to reveal painful topics relevant to many Black women, and probably to other women of color, they are powerful and insightful. I plan to read more books by Dawn Downey in the future.

[Terra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Dawn Downey knows the terrain of the human heart. Blindsided is an exhale and a deep breath.