Williams won a MacArthur Fellowship in part in recognition of the book's achievements.

Williams published The Alchemy of Race and Rights with Harvard University Press in 1991.

"[2] The Washington Post described the book as "targeting the legal mind, particularly its intersections with matters of race and gender.

"[2] Writing for the Boston Review in 1991, Wendy Brown said, "As a meditation on the searing injuries of racism, on hidden histories in the entrails of legal cases, or on the bankrupt character of contemporary American political life, the effect of Williams's alchemy is powerful beyond measure.

[6] When Williams won the MacArthur "genius grant" in 2000, the Foundation cited "[h]er highly regarded first book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights: A Diary of a Law Professor (1991)...an autobiographical work that illuminates some of America’s most complex problems.