Rachel Dolezal is still “unapologetically black.”
Her new memoir, “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World,” details her journey from a poor white girl in Montana to what she refers to as a “woke soul sista” working in Washington.
Dolezal, who pretended to be a black woman for years before her parents outed her as white in 2015, writes that she realized early on in life that she needed to free her inner blackness, in the memoir obtained by the Daily Mail.
“I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth… and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs,” she writes.
“I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo,” she continues. “Imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways… that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.”
Dolezal says her family was so poor that she had to wear clothing made from dog fur and her and her brother used butchered chicken heads in place of baseballs.
Throughout the memoir the controversial former NAACP leader writes about her struggles of growing up with strict and abusive parents, being molested by her brother, being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and exploring her bisexuality.
Dolezal, 39, also discusses what she calls the happiest time of her life – when she split from her black husband and became a director of the local Human Rights Education Institute.
“I was a Black-Is-Beautiful, Black liberation movement, fully conscious, woke soul sista,” she writes. “Finally allowed to blossom, I blossomed fast.”
Dolezal also talks about her life after her parents exposed her, writing that despite the criticism and backlash she still identifies “unapologetically black.”
“For me, Blackness is more than a set of racialized physical features,” writes Dolezal, who says in her book that she first learned about blackness by reading National Geographic.
“It involves acknowledging our common human ancestry with roots in Africa.”
“In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World” will be released March 28.
