The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family
by Dorothy Roberts
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Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s where relationships barely crossed the "colorline." Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage wasn't just a part of her upbringing, it was a shared mission. Her father, an anthropologist, spent her entire childhood working on a book about Black-white marriages--a project he never finished but shaped every aspect of their family life. As a 21-year-old show more graduate student, Dorothy's father dedicated himself to the study of interracial marriage and her mother soon became his full-time partner in that work. Together over the years they interviewed over 500 couples and assembled stunning stories about interracial marriages that took place as early as the 1880s--studying, but also living, championing, and believing in their power to advance social equality. Decades later, while sorting through her father's papers, Roberts uncovers a truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her family: her father's research didn't begin with her parents' love story--it came long before it. This discovery forces her to wrestle with her father's intentions, her own views about interracial relationships, and where she fits in that story. Rather than finish the book her father never published, Roberts immerses herself in their archive of interviews to trace the story of her parents and to better understand her own. Though grounded in her parents' research, it's Roberts' captivating storytelling that drives this memoir. In following the arc of her parents' interviews and marriage, The Mixed Marriage Project invites us into the everyday lives of interracial couples in Chicago over four decades. Along the way, Roberts reflects on her own childhood as a Black girl with a white father, and how those experiences shaped her into one of today's most prominent public thinkers and scholars on race. Blurring the boundaries between the political and the personal, between memoir and history, The Mixed Marriage Project is a deeply moving meditation on family, race, identity, and love. show lessTags
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The author, born to a white father and Jamaican mother details the hundreds of interviews conducted by her father from the 1930’s through the 1980’s about mixed race couples.
The contents were intended to become a book that never materialized. There were some very interesting concepts that I never thought about before. For example, white women married to black men may have had different experiences than white men married to black women regarding housing, job opportunities and raising their children. Another thought provoking concept to me was the questioning of whether the various couples were attempting to further the civil rights cause with their union.
There were times when reading the various interviews became boring, but the show more author also included her personal experiences which were interesting. show less
The contents were intended to become a book that never materialized. There were some very interesting concepts that I never thought about before. For example, white women married to black men may have had different experiences than white men married to black women regarding housing, job opportunities and raising their children. Another thought provoking concept to me was the questioning of whether the various couples were attempting to further the civil rights cause with their union.
There were times when reading the various interviews became boring, but the show more author also included her personal experiences which were interesting. show less
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Author Information
2+ Works 99 Members
Classifications
- Genres
- Anthropology, Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.8050092 — Society, Government, and Culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Ethnic and national groups standard subdivisions / Ethnic and national groups with ethnic origins from more than one continent, of European descent
- LCC
- HQ1031 .R6225 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women The family. Marriage. Home
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 25
- Popularity
- 1,071,166
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.20)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 2
