Newton’s pursuit gathers into a fist of anguish as she traces and faces 'monstrous bequests' of racism, from Southern ancestors who enslaved people to a Northern ancestor who helped drive Indigenous people from their villages in western Massachusetts. It makes sense, this method - which becomes the book’s structure, too - because curiosity and lives never proceed in direct paths. When one inquiry reaches its natural end, she belays herself back and begins another route. Her genealogical investigation transforms into an investigation of genealogy itself, a subject rich with conjecture and a perennial social longing that she terms 'ancestor hunger'. We sink as deep into history, science and spirituality as we do into Newton’s family tree. Who am I? is the question troubling Maud Newton in her extraordinary and wide-ranging book.
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