Synopses & Reviews
It all started with a Peaches and Cream Barbie.
When Brianna Wheeler was a child, she rejected her grandmother's birthday gift of a Black barbie, and in doing so, rejected her own biracial identity.
After her grandmother's death more than 30 years later, Brianna Wheeler inherited shares of a family trust, as well as her family matriarch's extensive genealogy research. While Brianna organized her grandmother's work, other inheritors fought amongst themselves to fortify their own inheritances. Brianna's hybrid illustrated memoir braids her grandmother's research into a timeline that travels between the battles that preceded the civil war, and her own family's battles with legacy, entitlement, and heritage.
Released by Korza Books in October of 2023, Altogether Different is Brianna Wheeler's debut memoir, and is being used as part of El Camino College's creative nonfiction curriculum for the fall 2023 semester.
Synopsis
If you could choose between being Black and being white, what would you do?
As a child, Brianna Wheeler, the mixed-race descendant of Dangerfield Newby-first of John Brown's raiders to die at Harpers Ferry in their bid to end slavery-unconsciously chose whiteness, unaware that she had the choice at all. As an adult, following the deaths of her mother and grandmother, Brianna struggled with her own identity, convinced that her lasting legacy would be the rejection of her own Blackness.
Then, in 2020, a racial reckoning rekindled her connection to both her heritage and her grandmother's lifelong work of preserving the stories of Dangerfield and the rest of her ancestors, leading Brianna to confront both long-held family dynamics and her own place in history-from a new perspective.
A unique blend of memoir, creative nonfiction and illustration, Altogether Different untangles the complex connection between the stories we tell ourselves and the histories preserved for us.
About the Author
Brianna Wheeler is an essayist, illustrator and features writer originally from San Pedro California. She lives in Portland, Oregon where she is a columnist for the Willamette Week and host of their podcast, The Dive.