Caroline Giles Banks

The Weight of Whiteness: a Memoir in Poetry Caroline Giles Banks

Before the United States Supreme Court overturned states' laws against miscegenation as unconstitutional in 1967, Caroline Giles Banks, a white woman, defied laws and mores of her native Texas and married a man of African descent. "The Weight of Whiteness" is a memoir, in poetry form, of the author's girlhood, courtship and interracial marriage during the heyday of the civil rights era in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Responses to her marriage include awe, disappointment and rejection. Daily family activities such as going to the beauty shop, park, church, and playground elicit curiosity, compassion, racist epithets, and death threats. Interspersed throughout the book are poems written by the author in response to select paintings and sculpture by visual artists in different cultures and periods. These ekphrastic poems serve to place the experience of the author within broader contexts of loss, struggle and hope. Dr. Banks, a cultural anthropologist as well as a published poet, brings the insights and sensitivity of her professional training to her poetic memoir.