The Guardian U.S. has published my argument for what I’ve called acknowledgment genealogy, the importance of reckoning with our individual families’ participation in slavery. “Amid a rise of laws forbidding discussions of racist histories, sharing our ancestors’ shameful wrongdoings is more urgent than ever” is the subhead. Acknowledgement is a crucial first baby step toward the repair we need. The illustration above was . . .
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.
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.