autobiography of a blue-eyed devil

Every book I've read that was published by Seal Press has been amazing, so a while back I checked out their website to search for ideas for my next nonfiction read. I came across a description of Inga Muscio's autobiography of a blue eyed devil: my life and times in a racist, imperialist society and immediately went out looking for it. I had to do an interlibrary loan to get the book and when I checked it out, the librarian muttered the title aloud with distaste. But I'm so glad I read it. The book is really quite extraordinary. 

Muscio is one sensitive and conscious individual. She is more awake than most of us, aware of underlying racism to which most people turn a blind eye. The book is full of Muscio's personal experiences, but the book isn't much of an autobiography. Instead it is a collection of musings, philosophy, theory, and historical facts. It is difficult to describe, in part because it is such a powerhouse of a book, one that knocked me over. While I was reading it a local woman went missing and there were posters everywhere, headlines about her disappearance were blasted all over the news. My husband asked why such a big deal was being made of her and I rationalized how sad and strange her disappearance was. He said he understood, but that the situation wasn't unique, that a variation of such a story happened all the time. As I read on in the book, it hit me that the tragedy of this missing woman was such a tragedy because she was white and had she been another ethnicity, her face would not be plastered all over town. It's hard to type these words as we like to think race doesn't matter anymore, that we have evolved past all that. But it really runs deep in our society and Muscio sees that, showing the reader the unpleasant truth about (as she calls it) 'Amerikka.' For some it may be a difficult book to swallow, but it's very poignant, forcing the reader to confront America's racist past and present.