Starred review from April 1, 2001
Henry's (journalism, Univ. of California, Berkeley) family biography is an engaging, emotional, genealogical adventure into ethnicity and self-acceptance. The author, who is black, is a former reporter for the Washington Post, and he uses his investigative instincts to create an intriguing "back to the future" page-turner as he searches for the white branch of his family tree. What sets this biography apart from other family biographies, like Alex Haley's Queen (Morrow, 1993), is Henry's riveting personal narratives of his genealogical research and childhood accounts. His trials and tribulations in researching provide the book with its protagonist and antagonist. Henry's tell-it-like-it-is approach will provide a clear picture into the origins of human nature and ethnicity. Fascinating and compelling, this book will have a place in public and academic libraries. Veronica Davis, Henrico Cty. P.L., Glen Allen, VA
Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2001
A white bloodline in a black family isn't unusual, but documentation of it is. Journalism professor Henry possessed such documentation in a photograph of his English immigrant great-great-grandfather A. J. Beaumont and in a letter acknowledging the parentage of his great-grandmother Pearl Brumley. Using his old reporter's skills and tenacity, he learned about the white branch of his family and how years of American racial history had treated his white kin. He admits complex feelings about the search as he recalls his more immediate family's struggles with Jim Crow in St. Louis and later the more subtle discrimination in Seattle, where he was raised. He discovered that Pearl secretly maintained contact with the white relations for years and that the descendants of a wealthy white landowner forebear suffered economic setbacks and lowered social status, whereas the descendents of a former slave became doctors, engineers, and writers. Henry's account of the complicated warp and woof of American race relations manifested in one family proves most moving.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)
March 5, 2001
Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Laura Brumley, a young, educated mulatto ex-slave entered into a "loving" involvement with A.J. Beaumont, a white overseer on a plantation in Louisiana. A photo of Beaumont, his crinkled newspaper obituary and his deathbed note acknowledging his mixed-race daughter, Pearl, were passed down as heirlooms on the African-American side of the family. These fragile links were the end of the story until Brumley's great-great grandson Henry, associate professor of journalism at U.C.–Berkeley, used his investigative skills to try to locate his white relations. The more Henry searched, the more he examined his own troubled life as a black man, which he retells in a stream-of-consciousness style that is exasperatingly repetitious. But buried in the flashbacks and flash-forwards are some gems. For example, he recalls his mother telling him about reciting "I pledge allegiance to the rag," a common utterance among African-American schoolchildren during the days of Jim Crow that's rarely been mentioned in other memoirs. Henry's recollections of his Princeton days—of being alienated from both the preppy Beach Boys culture and the lingo-speaking fans of the O'Jays—are quite moving. He piques further interest by briefly mentioning his grandmother's 1920s trip to the Soviet Union, where she had heard blacks were treated as well as whites. In the end, Henry succeeds in his mission, but the emotional insights this memoir brings are the reward received, for both author and reader. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Jill Kneerim. (May)Forecast:Readers who enjoyed James McBride's
The Color of Water may find Henry's tale equally compelling. Additionally, his journalistic connections (the book mentions many
Washington Post writers, and the jacket has a plug from Bob Woodward), may help the book garner high-profile media attention.