If you are a fan of interesting nonfiction, regardless of the subject matter, you’ll enjoy Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. If you are interested in real estate or the expansion of metro areas beyond even the typical suburb, or race migration, then you’ll definitely like it.
When I read the premise of the book — the investigation of these “exurbs” that are whiter than the state and country as a whole, cities meant to be throwbacks to the 1950’s with all the amenities of a typical suburb — I was somewhat interested, but was I interested enough to read a whole book about it? The answer is yes, not only did I read a whole book about it, but I really enjoyed reading a whole book about it.
Rich Benjamin, an African-American man, says at the beginning of the book that he’s not writing this to judge it as right or wrong:
This journey is about our nations’ future, not about how white and black people are getting along (page 12).
And he was true to that.
Benjamin went and lived in several of these Whitopias for weeks at a time — joining the community, making friends, investigating the real estate market. He was true to his aim and reported objectively, whether writing about retirees who enjoyed golf or people who described themselves as separatists.
Benjamin describes the people he met with affection, and as he writes about them, they come to life. These vignettes are completely in keeping with the purpose of the book, telling us who lives in these Whitopias and why — but also keeps the book interesting, injecting human interest with the facts and figures that he also supplies.
I feel like I haven’t done it justice in describing it, but let me just say that I can highly recommend this interesting and very readable book.
Jennifer Donovan loves to get hooked with interesting nonfiction. She lives in very white Connecticut, but is glad to have attended a racially diverse high school in the Houston suburbs. She blogs at Snapshot.