Anger to my mom is strength and unimpeachable truth, a companion to determination. I write about this a little bit in Ancestor Trouble, how the idea of identifying, much less acknowledging, difficult feelings such as fear or sadness fills her with rage.
On the one hand, it feels a bit self-centered to catch you up on the praise for Ancestor Trouble since my last post in April, but on the other hand it would feel rude not to acknowledge people who put time into saying thoughtful things about the book. I am always and forever a Southerner-one-step-removed.
Ancestor Trouble is out in the world! If you follow me on social media or receive my newsletter, you may have heard plenty about it by now, but if not, here are some highlights. The New York Times review by Kerri Arsenault is a dream (“extraordinary and wide-ranging,” “a literary feat”), as are reviews by Lorraine Berry for The Boston Globe (“beautiful and complexly nuanced,” with . . .
My book, Ancestor Trouble, is anticipated this month by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, the Millions, the Chicago Review of Books, Apartment Therapy, Goodreads readers. Esquire has named it one of the best books of the year so far.
I don’t ordinarily link to my newsletters here nowadays, but I’m making an exception for the latest, “The Truth Will Set You Free.” It’s about how wrestling with wrongs of my ancestors, rather than being a miserly, judgmental, closed-off process, has been an incredible opening. I’m also giving away an advance copy of Ancestor Trouble. And there are some good links . . .