Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

Ancestor trouble : a reckoning and a reconciliation / Maud Newton.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Random House, [2022]Edition: First editionDescription: xviii, 378 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, genealogical table ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780812997927
  • 0812997921
  • 9780812987492
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
A doorway -- Not forgotten -- Like a lenticular print -- Skeletons and magnolias -- Family secrets -- DNA sleuthing -- A universal family tree -- Taking a bite -- It skips a generation -- An impulse to leap -- The idea of heredity -- Genes expressing themselves -- Grandma's eyes -- The family face -- Mugshots from DNA -- Grudging kinship -- Chasing the dream -- Emotional recurrences -- Heirlooms and disinheritance -- Monstrous bequests -- Not racist -- Disconnection -- Unacknowledged remains -- The witch -- Generational curses -- Veneration -- Lineage repair -- The namesake -- Beneficial and malignant creativity -- Roots.
Summary: "Maud Newton's ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother's father, who came of age during the Great Depression in Texas, was supposedly married thirteen times, and survived being shot in the stomach by one of his wives. His father purportedly killed a man in the street with a hay hook, and later died in a mental institution. On her father's side, a Massachusetts ancestor was accused of being a witch, who cast sickness on her neighbor's ox and was later tried in court for causing the death of a child. Maud's father had a master's in aerospace engineering on scholarship from an Ivy League university and was valedictorian of his law school class; he also viewed slavery as a benevolent institution that should never have been disbanded, and would paint over the faces of brown children in her storybooks. He was obsessed with maintaining the purity of his family bloodline, which he could trace back to the days of the Revolutionary War. Her mother was a whirlwind of charisma and passions that could become obsessions; she kept over thirty cats and birds in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, and later started a church in her living room, where she would perform exorcisms. Maud's parents' marriage was acrimonious, their divorce a relief. But the meeting of their lines in her was something she could not shake. She signed up for an online account and began researching her genealogy. She found records of marriages and trials, wills in which her ancestors gave slaves to their spouses and children. The search took over her life. But as she dabbled in DNA testing and found herself sunk in census archives at 1 o'clock in the morning, it was unclear to her what she was looking for. She wanted a truth that would set her free, in a way she hadn't identified yet. This book seeks to understand why the practice of genealogy has become a multi-billion-dollar industry in contemporary America, while also mining the secrets and contradictions of one singularly memorable family history"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 929.2097 N565 Available 33111011300395
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 929.2097 N565 Available 33111010808307
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Extraordinary and wide-ranging . . . a literary feat that simultaneously builds and excavates identity."-- The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize * An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her complicated Southern family--and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves--in this "brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation" ( The Boston Globe ).

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Esquire, Garden & Gun

Maud Newton's ancestors have fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother's father was said to have married thirteen times. Her mother's grandfather killed a man with a hay hook. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated Maud's maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts.

Newton's family inspired in her a desire to understand family patterns: what we are destined to replicate and what we can leave behind. She set out to research her genealogy--her grandfather's marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors' roles in slavery and other harms. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity's dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them.

Searching and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer's attempt to use genealogy--a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry--to make peace with the secrets and contradictions of her family's past and face its reverberations in the present, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.

Includes bibliographic references (pages 331-364) and index.

A doorway -- Not forgotten -- Like a lenticular print -- Skeletons and magnolias -- Family secrets -- DNA sleuthing -- A universal family tree -- Taking a bite -- It skips a generation -- An impulse to leap -- The idea of heredity -- Genes expressing themselves -- Grandma's eyes -- The family face -- Mugshots from DNA -- Grudging kinship -- Chasing the dream -- Emotional recurrences -- Heirlooms and disinheritance -- Monstrous bequests -- Not racist -- Disconnection -- Unacknowledged remains -- The witch -- Generational curses -- Veneration -- Lineage repair -- The namesake -- Beneficial and malignant creativity -- Roots.

"Maud Newton's ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother's father, who came of age during the Great Depression in Texas, was supposedly married thirteen times, and survived being shot in the stomach by one of his wives. His father purportedly killed a man in the street with a hay hook, and later died in a mental institution. On her father's side, a Massachusetts ancestor was accused of being a witch, who cast sickness on her neighbor's ox and was later tried in court for causing the death of a child. Maud's father had a master's in aerospace engineering on scholarship from an Ivy League university and was valedictorian of his law school class; he also viewed slavery as a benevolent institution that should never have been disbanded, and would paint over the faces of brown children in her storybooks. He was obsessed with maintaining the purity of his family bloodline, which he could trace back to the days of the Revolutionary War. Her mother was a whirlwind of charisma and passions that could become obsessions; she kept over thirty cats and birds in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, and later started a church in her living room, where she would perform exorcisms. Maud's parents' marriage was acrimonious, their divorce a relief. But the meeting of their lines in her was something she could not shake. She signed up for an online account and began researching her genealogy. She found records of marriages and trials, wills in which her ancestors gave slaves to their spouses and children. The search took over her life. But as she dabbled in DNA testing and found herself sunk in census archives at 1 o'clock in the morning, it was unclear to her what she was looking for. She wanted a truth that would set her free, in a way she hadn't identified yet. This book seeks to understand why the practice of genealogy has become a multi-billion-dollar industry in contemporary America, while also mining the secrets and contradictions of one singularly memorable family history"-- Provided by publisher.

Powered by Koha