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.
This year I abandoned the novel I worked on for ages. Fragments survive in the novel I’m working on now, but it’s a fundamentally different book, and that feels great. For years, I resisted writing a nonfiction book first, because I really didn’t want to write a memoir. But it turned out that (1) I really did need, as several . . .
Before I realized I was writing a nonfiction book about my ancestors, I wrote what ultimately became the second chapter of Ancestor Trouble as an essay for a reading with Alexander Chee at the KGB Bar. I’d been trying and failing for a couple years to write about my great-grandfather, Charley, and his story at last took a preliminary shape as I scrambled to put together something new for that night.
Ancestor Trouble received a starred review from Kirkus! “The current wave of interest in genealogy, heredity, family history, and responsibility for past injustices crescendos in a comprehensive work combining personal narrative and reporting,” the reviewer says. “Exhaustively researched, engagingly presented, and glowing with intelligence and honesty.” ⭐️ This part made me laugh out loud in recognition: “These ruptures seeded a project . . .