“The author augments her personal experience with eye-opening interviews...A nuanced, forthright, emotionally compelling take on a painful subject.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Tharps explores this taboo and urgent subject with courage, vision, and great sensitivity.” —Michael Eric Dyson

“Colorism is a topic people of color are reluctant to talk about, but Lori L. Tharps investigates this difficult subject with grace, humility, and inclusiveness. Through historical context and frank personal stories, Same Family, Different Colors creates a powerful mediation on what so often goes unsaid even in the closest of families. With its fascinating multicultural focus, there’s something here for everyone to learn about themselves, and others.” —Mat Johnson, author of Loving Day

“The proximity of my skin to whiteness will probably protect me from having my face blown off by a stranger behind a locked door in the middle of the night, but what of my daughter? She, like Renishia McBride, is ‘black from a distance’ and a threat in many places. Colorism in society is dangerously complicated. Colorism in the family is painful. Lori L. Tharps’s provocative book Same Family, Different Colors has the potential to be powerfully healing, but it won’t be a pretty process.” —Michaela Angela Davis, Image Activist/Cultural Critic/Light, Blonde and Black

“A compassionate exploration of colorism in the most private realms of our lives—with our familias—Lori Tharps’ Same Family, Different Colors is a much-needed book for a country (and a world) that grows more multi-hued with every passing year. Tharps combines journalism with history, memoir, and good old-fashioned storytelling to weave a powerful thread across communities and to suggest new ways of embracing our collective futures.” —Daisy Hernandez, author of A Cup of Water Under My Bed: a Memoir