It is perhaps a bit less perplexing for me to review this book than it would be for a great many people.  I lived in Washington, D. C., in the 1960s and knew very well a residential area called “The Gold Coast” on 16th Street, Northwest.   Here were houses much more expensive than the one in which I grew up here in Galveston.  That means very little but the fact that the houses had been built, were owned and lived in by Blacks was something very new and different to me.  I learned a great deal about the cultural statutory that the author is discussing in her autobiography.

Galveston was always a “bit different” even in the long ago days when I grew up here in the 1940s. 

I was raised in a bungalow at 42^nd and Avenue R.  Just up 42^nd Street at Avenue R ½ was a “high raised house” which belonged to a Mrs. Craig.  I know nothing of Mr. Craig or children if they existed.  I know that Mrs. Craig was Black because I occasionally delivered mail to her.  Not directly from the Post Office but because it had been delivered to us at 42^nd and R.  I would walk up to R ½ to the Craig house, go up the stairs and ring the bell.  I handed the mail to Mrs. Craig rather than putting it in the mailbox downstairs because that was how things were done in those days where I lived.  We did not mark “Not at this address” and leave it for redelivery.  

Do the two preceding paragraphs mean I can relate to and understand everything the author is attempting to get across to her readers?  Absolutely not.  I am Caucasian, male and sixty-eight years of age.  It means I had passing knowledge of the fact that many people of African-American descent did not live in “socially dysfunctional ghettoes consumed by lives of crime” and I am so very glad that was and is the case.  

The author, by her own explanation, is writing “in response to the past two decades of negative media stereotypes that seem to define people of color.”

Marsha Stephens Wilson Rappaport is Black, female, Jewish and the daughter of a dentist and a teacher.  She is also highly observant and her book is something of a commentary as much as an autobiography.  She asks questions of her readers.  “Have you ever asked yourself how powerful this country would be if there had been no racism or discrimination? “  What kind of creative energy could have built this country if many races had not been ghettoized and abused?  What if we could have built this nation without hate?  These questions are worth asking and pondering.  I am not the first person in the United States to have commented that if Adolph Hitler had not been insanely prejudiced against Jews we might all be speaking German in this country.

I will leave it to readers to discover what, precisely, is the secret life of a Black trophy wife by reading the book.  The book can be read on several levels but the very best one, in my opinion, is the level that has to do with the “American Dream.”  The author makes the very important point that her relatives---and many others in this country---have worked toward the “American Dream” as hard as possible.  And, in differing ways they have achieved that dream.  Perfectly so?   No.  But as the author writes---“This is a book about being an American first”---and I relate very much to that sentiment.  I will take our country with its many past and present imperfections over any other country about which I have any knowledge. 

Read the book.  Marsha Rappaport as an author demands nothing from her readers but she does add to our general cultural knowledge in a pleasant and informative way.    

Read the Webio Article by Guidry News Service on the publication of 
The Secret Life of a Black Trophy Wife  Link