Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation
Book by Maud Newton
DETAILS
Publisher : Random House (March 29, 2022) Language : English Hardcover : 400 pages ISBN-10 : 0812997921 ISBN-13 : 978-0812997927 Item Weight : 1.45 pounds Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.33 x 9.6 inches Best Sellers Rank: #39,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #22 in Genetics (Books) #36 in Dysfunctional Families (Books) #1,231 in Memoirs (Books) , “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 • An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional 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, The Washington Post, Esquire Maud Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated through Maud’s maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Maud’s father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, was an educated man who extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the “purity” of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War. He tried in vain to control Maud’s mother, a whirlwind of charisma and passion given to feverish projects: thirty rescue cats, and a church in the family’s living room where she performed exorcisms. Her parents’ divorce, when it came, was a relief. Still, her position at the intersection of her family bloodlines inspired in Newton inspired an anxiety that she could not shake, a fear that she would replicate their damage. She saw similar anxieties in the lives of friends, in the works of writers and artists she admired. As obsessive in her own way as her parents, Newton researched her genealogy—her grandfather’s marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors’ roles in slavery and genocide—and sought family secrets through her DNA. But immersed in census archives and cousin matches, she yearned for deeper truths. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and the debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity’s dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them. Searching, moving, 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 expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us. Read more
REVIEW
Maud Newton was born into a highly dysfunctional family filled with bizarre and unique characters on both sides. As she grew to adulthood she came to recognize the effect her family history and genetic inheritance had on her life, and began to explore and research her ancestry. Like most genealogists, what she found corroborated some family stories and exposed some other long hidden family secrets, especially after she took advantage of the growing field of genetic genealogy. Ancestor Trouble is partly a personal memoir and partly a family history. Newton is an excellent writer who knows how to tell a gripping tale and relate personal memories, many of which must have been painful to recall. I am a genealogist myself, and I come from a Southern family background which has some similarities to Newton's. In fact, as I read her description of some of her researches I realized that she and I are in all probability distantly related. I have made use of DNA analysis in my own family research. Like Newton, what I discovered confirmed some family stories but created some new mysteries and questions which may never be answered. I enjoyed Ancestor Trouble, and I hope that Newton's quests will continue, and that they will bring her the resolution she seeks.
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