Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth

Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award for Best NonfictionNonfiction Finalist for the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book AwardsNamed one of The Root's 2023 Best Books by Black AuthorsIt's often said that Black women are magic, but what if they really are mythological?Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton yearned for stories she could connect to―true ones, of course, but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. Greek and Roman myths felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins, and tales by Black authors were often rooted too far in the past, a continent away.Mouton’s memoir is a praise song and an elegy for Black womanhood. She tells her own story while remixing myths and drawing on traditions from all over the world: mothers literally grow eyes in the backs of their heads, children dust the childhood off their bodies, and women come to love the wildness of the hair they once tried to tame. Wi