One year ago, Marra B. Gad’s The Color of Love hit shelves everywhere! In the months since its publication, Gad’s memoir has been the focus of countless articles, book clubs, panel presentations, and more.
This powerful memoir details Gad’s experiences growing up as “a mixed-race, Jewish unicorn.” In Black spaces, she was not “Black enough,” and in Jewish spaces, she was mistaken for the help, asked to leave, or worse. Even in her own family, as she explores throughout her book, Gad faced racism and rejection from her loved ones.
At turns heart-wrenching and heartwarming, The Color of Love is a story about what you inherit from your family—identity, disease, melanin, hate, and most powerful of all, love.
Celebrate the anniversary of The Color of Love by purchasing it on IndieBound, Amazon, Bookshop, or directly from Agate.
Praise for The Color of Love:
“In The Color of Love, Gad tells her story in straightforward, unadorned prose. . . . The reader is left to marvel at Gad’s magnanimity. In the face of a lifetime of racially motivated aggression, she consistently chooses love.”
—Jerusalem Post
“Offers a Jewish mode of love. . . Institutions have much to learn from reading The Color of Love.”
—JewSchool.com
“An easy narrative on a complicated experience. It is a deeply personal story through which the author has shared a perspective that is seldom told.”
—Jewish Book Council
“Gad’s message about resisting hate is solid. . . . [An] honest memoir about looking beyond hate to find some semblance of peace on the other side.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Marra B. Gad’s The Color of Love is a timely and touching memoir of a biracial girl adopted by a Jewish family. It is a story of her ‘awakening’ to the inherent pressures of being black and female in a white world, pressures that are compounded by being adopted and raised in a white Jewish culture. Her pursuit to live a life of love in a world of racial, religious, and anti-feminist hate and bigotry was a continuous battle toward finding her soul. For a good life-affirming read, I highly recommend The Color of Love.”
—Ron Stallworth, New York Times–bestselling author of Black Klansman
“The Color of Love is a spectacular addition to the canon of great Jewish literature. It is timely, confronting urgent questions of racism within the Jewish community, but it is also a timeless parable of hope, love, and the possibility of transformation. This book will challenge all of us to confront our biases and assumptions; it will educate, enliven, and inspire; but most of all, like all great storytelling, it is one book you just can’t put down.”
—Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
“This is not a story you’ve heard before. I was blown away by how engrossed I became in The Color of Love and was compelled to find out what happens next to the book’s heroine and author in this true story. Gad’s fresh voice manages to bring the reader into her heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, and often comedic journey, resulting in a memorable page-turner that you will not want to end.”
—Rosa Blasi, actress and author of Jock Itch