Newswise — Emily Bernard examines the complexities of interracial friendships in "Some of My Best Friends." Published this week by HarperCollins, the book is a timely look at a subject that has been rarely explored.
"Conceiving this book was easy," said Bernard, an assistant professor of English and ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. "It began with questions that have occupied me since childhood. Which ingredients make interracial friendships possible? Which factors destroy them? What do other people do at those moments when racial difference rears its head uncomfortably in a friendship?"
Bernard enlisted writers of many races, including Susan Straight and Luis Rodriguez, to contribute essays for the collection. Bernard wrote the introduction—a reverie recalling her experiences growing up as the sole black girl among a homogenous group of white friends her mother didn't trust. She also introduces readers to "Racial Tourette's," identifiable "when someone is unable to speak about anything other than race when in the presence of a nonwhite person," but says she counts some such people as her friends.
Bernard previously explored an extraordinary friendship in "Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten," which was glowingly reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review in 2001.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Bernard holds a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University.
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