Martha S. Jones' new memoir/family history deploys analytical and writing skills from her two successive careers; first as a legal services attorney defending citizens in NY civil courts, and then earning a PhD in history and working her way up the ranks to an endowed chair at Johns Hopkins. Her recent academic books on birthright citizenship and African American women have been highly praised by her peers.
"The Trouble of Color" tracks her various family lines from slavery days to her own generation, testing family stories passed down for generations against the panoply of documents that archivists, family historians and storytellers, and genealogists can bring to bear.
This memoir also is an informed look “behind the veil" of Jim Crow and its antecedents, following W.E.B. Du Bois who originated the "color line" and "double consciousness" that create the warp and woof of Jones' "striver" family -- whose 20th-century members included an HBCU president, a psychiatrist, and a national church leader, but whose 18th-century roots were in enslavement. Had Jones stopped at that point the memoir would have ended on a triumphalist note, but she has her own puzzle to solve.
Alice Walker's "colorism" provides the backdrop as Jones explores her pwn life -- especially her relationship with her father who silently "passed" -- and her generation of mixed-race Americans as well as those today who are still coming to grips with mixed-race families.
Definitely looking forward to Rich Girl Nation, and now eyeing Floored!
Can't wait to read Rich Girl Nation and Kuleana!
THE TROUBLE OF COLOR
Martha S. Jones' new memoir/family history deploys analytical and writing skills from her two successive careers; first as a legal services attorney defending citizens in NY civil courts, and then earning a PhD in history and working her way up the ranks to an endowed chair at Johns Hopkins. Her recent academic books on birthright citizenship and African American women have been highly praised by her peers.
"The Trouble of Color" tracks her various family lines from slavery days to her own generation, testing family stories passed down for generations against the panoply of documents that archivists, family historians and storytellers, and genealogists can bring to bear.
This memoir also is an informed look “behind the veil" of Jim Crow and its antecedents, following W.E.B. Du Bois who originated the "color line" and "double consciousness" that create the warp and woof of Jones' "striver" family -- whose 20th-century members included an HBCU president, a psychiatrist, and a national church leader, but whose 18th-century roots were in enslavement. Had Jones stopped at that point the memoir would have ended on a triumphalist note, but she has her own puzzle to solve.
Alice Walker's "colorism" provides the backdrop as Jones explores her pwn life -- especially her relationship with her father who silently "passed" -- and her generation of mixed-race Americans as well as those today who are still coming to grips with mixed-race families.