nobledruali
Well-Known Member
:arrow: I had never heard about this book until now and it sounded interesting so I decided to share. Sounds like we might be seeing this one on the big screen or on the small screen in due time. :wink:
Secret Daughter
A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away by June Cross
By Kam Williams
(September 13, 2006)
*"My mother was an aspiring actress. She had separated from my father, a well-known song-and-dance man, shortly after I was born, in January 1954. My mother had met him backstage at the Paramount in 1949, before television changed show business forever.
They said I looked exotic, she classic. Together- a bamboo-colored redhead carrying her olive-skinned, curly-haired daughter- together, we seemed alien. Skin fractured our kinship. Even at four, I knew that something was amiss." -- Excerpted from Chapter 1, Bedrock
Ten years ago, PBS aired a documentary entitled Secret Daughter, a gut-wrenching bio-pic about the life of little orphan June, abandoned by both of her parents at an early age to be raised by strangers in Atlantic City.
What made Ms. Cross' story so compelling was not the fact that her father was black and her mother was white, but that her mother was such an ice princess when her long-lost daughter tracked her down with a camera crew to ask her why she had dumped her on the doorstep of people she barely knew so many years ago.
June came off as oh so masochistic trying to kiss-up to her cold-hearted mom, Norma, who did little to hide her annoyance that this sepia skeleton would come jumping out of her closet at a time when she was happily-married and had a white daughter with actor Larry "Corporal Agarn" Storch of F-Troop fame. Anyway, after hitting an emotional dead end retracing her roots, one would think that Cross would drop the "Love me, Mommy!" act and move on with her life.
But with both her mother and father, Stump, now deceased, June decided that it was time to write a memoir of the same name. Unfortunately, the book is not nearly as riveting as the already televised account of her unfortunate ordeal. The problem is that she is far too inclined to give her absentee-mom a pass, ostensibly because the woman was white, and that segregation is an acceptable excuse for their separation back in the Fifties.
While I admire the author for wearing her various vulnerabilities on her sleeve, she obviously remains damaged goods and inclined to make delusional rationalizations when, in my opinion, she ought to be tap-dancing on her mother's grave (and maybe on Stump's, too.) June just doesn't understand that there's never an acceptable excuse for the way that racist witch denied and mistreated her till the day she died.
Before she tries to convince the world that her mother was misunderstood and actually really loved her, June needs to convince herself, and then figure a way to erase the monster we saw on that damning PBS broadcast from our collective memory.
Secret Daughter
A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away by June Cross
By Kam Williams
(September 13, 2006)
*"My mother was an aspiring actress. She had separated from my father, a well-known song-and-dance man, shortly after I was born, in January 1954. My mother had met him backstage at the Paramount in 1949, before television changed show business forever.
They said I looked exotic, she classic. Together- a bamboo-colored redhead carrying her olive-skinned, curly-haired daughter- together, we seemed alien. Skin fractured our kinship. Even at four, I knew that something was amiss." -- Excerpted from Chapter 1, Bedrock
Ten years ago, PBS aired a documentary entitled Secret Daughter, a gut-wrenching bio-pic about the life of little orphan June, abandoned by both of her parents at an early age to be raised by strangers in Atlantic City.
What made Ms. Cross' story so compelling was not the fact that her father was black and her mother was white, but that her mother was such an ice princess when her long-lost daughter tracked her down with a camera crew to ask her why she had dumped her on the doorstep of people she barely knew so many years ago.
June came off as oh so masochistic trying to kiss-up to her cold-hearted mom, Norma, who did little to hide her annoyance that this sepia skeleton would come jumping out of her closet at a time when she was happily-married and had a white daughter with actor Larry "Corporal Agarn" Storch of F-Troop fame. Anyway, after hitting an emotional dead end retracing her roots, one would think that Cross would drop the "Love me, Mommy!" act and move on with her life.
But with both her mother and father, Stump, now deceased, June decided that it was time to write a memoir of the same name. Unfortunately, the book is not nearly as riveting as the already televised account of her unfortunate ordeal. The problem is that she is far too inclined to give her absentee-mom a pass, ostensibly because the woman was white, and that segregation is an acceptable excuse for their separation back in the Fifties.
While I admire the author for wearing her various vulnerabilities on her sleeve, she obviously remains damaged goods and inclined to make delusional rationalizations when, in my opinion, she ought to be tap-dancing on her mother's grave (and maybe on Stump's, too.) June just doesn't understand that there's never an acceptable excuse for the way that racist witch denied and mistreated her till the day she died.
Before she tries to convince the world that her mother was misunderstood and actually really loved her, June needs to convince herself, and then figure a way to erase the monster we saw on that damning PBS broadcast from our collective memory.