Don't Play in the Sun - One Woman's Journey Through the Color Complex (Hardcover, 1st ed)

To be sure, this is book is not a pity party–but rather a nuanced look at identity, and the irrepressible and graceful will of the human spirit. Peppered with “Postcards from the Color Complex," reminiscences of some of the author’s most powerful experiences, Golden takes us inside her world, and inside her heart to show what a half-century of intraracial and interracial personal politics looks like. We come to see the world through the eyes of the young Marita, and the dualism that existed in her own home. The ebony-hued father who cherished her and taught her to be "black and proud," and the lighter-skinned mother who one summer afternoon admonished Marita while she was outside, “Come on in the house, it’s too hot to be playing out here. I’ve told you don’t go playing in the sun, ‘cause as it is, you gonna have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children.”

At every turn in her life, in high school, her black power college days, as a young married woman in Africa, as a college professor, as an accomplished author and even today, race and color are the inescapable veils through which Golden is viewed.

In her most daring book to date, esteemed author Marita Golden has the courage to take on a topic others only talk about behind closed doors.