Rebecca Carroll

Rebecca Carroll builds her work across cultural criticism, editing, audio production, and memoir, often exploring race, identity, family, and belonging. Surviving the White Gaze recounts her childhood as the only Black person in a rural New Hampshire town, adopted by white parents, and her later negotiation of a difficult relationship with her birth mother. Simon & Schuster released the book during 2021 and styles it with the subtitle A Memoir. Carroll forms the narrative from childhood scenes, family relationships, moves between cities, and the communities through which she developed a secure sense of self. Her journalism and cultural criticism have appeared in major newspapers and magazines, while her audio work includes podcasts for WNYC and other media organizations. Those forms inform the memoir’s attention to voice: Carroll places her own recollection beside received ideas about race and adoption, showing how identity develops through repeated encounters as well as decisive changes in family life.