I finished this particular challenge at the end of November but as I hadn’t read all the 25 books I had set aside I decided to finish them later. I am glad that I did because there have been a couple of gems in these books which might otherwise have been relegated to the bottom of my to-be-read piles and not be read for months or even years.
Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton is part memoir, part family history and partly an exploration of the relationships which we have with the past within our families. I, yet again, have no idea when or where I acquired this book but it is a hardback edition, with dustcover, originally published in America and with an American marketing sticker affixed to the front cover. It’s in good condition and I will have picked it up because I enjoy reading memoirs and books by people who find something unusual in their family tree.
The author is an American feature writer who came from a disturbed home in Miami. Her mother was an enthusiastic, evangelical, demon slaying Christian who founded her own church and her father was a lawyer, a racist and an abuser. After her family splintered there were other issues including promiscuity, betrayal, lies and sexual abuse. The author decided to try and make sense of her life by exploring the history of her family which she did by some extensive research and by chasing back stories she had been told to ascertain their truth, if any. Some of what she finds out is fascinating and some is very worrying for her.
In addition, the author became interested in how our ancestors and family affect us. She talks about DNA, the dangers of family history websites, cultures that revere their ancestors, how and what we can inherit, how trauma travels through generations and how we might learn to forgive people in our family line who we may not know.
I was interested in the author’s family history and her own life story and how she shows that what happened in past generations affects family members today. She explores the fact that abuse and mental health issues seem to be present all the way through her family’s history. She reconsiders her own childhood by what she learns about her parents’ background, although she is estranged from her father and has a difficult relationship with her mother. She finds ancestors that she wants to admire but also finds that they were slaveowners and has to try and reconcile this.
I was also interested in what the author had to say about the dangers of stereotyping people according to their DNA and the different ways that cultures relate to those from the past. Her childhood has soured her against Christianity but she acknowledges that she still sees things through a Christian lens. She then explores a spiritual way of getting in touch with and forgiving her ancestors that I found interesting to read about but less important than the author does.
I wish that this book had been written in a more linear fashion and hadn’t darted around the generations and the author’s experiences in what seems to be a random way. I could also have done without a lot of the stuff about genes and heredity which I didn’t understand and had to blip over. Nevertheless, this was a fascinating book and one which I shall keep with other memoirs and family histories on my shelf.
This challenge is now finished and I can move on to another one.
Anne Is Reading 