Having grown up in suburban New Jersey, Jerkins realizes as an adult that she has little connection to her family's roots and knows next to nothing about their past in the American South, so she sets out on a quest to discover her forgotten heritage. Her journey spans from Creole Louisiana and the coastal islands off the eastern seaboard to California and connections to Native American tribes in Oklahoma.

My appreciation for this book was augmented by (unintentionally) having read it nearly simultaneously with Twitty's The Cooking Gene and Four Hundred Souls. There is a significant amount of overlap among the three works, and many of the themes, events and histories became more familiar through this repetition. As a student of genealogy myself, I reveled in Jerkins' research into her family history, but I was a little concerned about the conclusions she drew regarding Carry Love. Maybe she could find a descendant of a DeBlanc to confirm via DNA testing? I delighted in Jerkins' curiosity, empathized with her disappointments and appreciated her willingness to talk about difficult and painful aspects of her family's history. Overall, an interesting read on a theme I hadn't thought much about: those who participated in The Great Migration to leave behind the places which and people who had caused their families misery and suffering for so long wished to cut ties and make a fresh start. Understandably, they often didn't wish to speak of their ancestral homes in the South, which has left subsequent generations rather in the dark about their own family histories. ( )

audiobook nonfiction (narrated by the author)

an interesting look into the lost stories of Black (and indigenous) cultural roots and inherited traumas/superstitions, as well as plenty of relevant history. ( )

I think this is a book that will make me feel all the deep emotions that can only come from dealing with the questions: "Who am I and where did I came from?"

Morgan Jenkins' second book is a riveting exploration of her family roots. Her journey takes her first to the Low Country of S. Carolina and Georgia, the Gullah Geechee islands where the first enslaved people landed, now stolen acres dominated by wealthy white landowners. There, Jenkins learns about the medicinal roots and herbs that saved lives when no medical professionals served Black people. Next, to Louisiana and her Creole ancestors, the gens de couleur libre, free people of color, who ended up travelling with exiled Native Americans and becoming freedmen in Oklahoma. The law called the Dawes Rolls determined which of the Native tribespeople received land allotments, and if you were judged as more Black than Native and listed as such on the Rolls, you were denied tribal membership and the benefits of its privileges. Her last stop is LA, as some of her family had moved West for opportunities that again eluded Black people due to the virulent racism that was pervasive through the Rodney King area and has resulted in Blacks recently leaving California in large numbers. Jenkins' writing is scholarly yet folksy as she shares the delight and pain of her family members and the incredible knowledge gained from helpful strangers in each locale. It's a fruitful combination of travelogue and history lesson.

Quotes: "Black jazz artists infused their music with Black church styles from the rural South to make their music something the whites couldn't imitate."

"In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to recognize slavery."

"Creoles did not want to carry the weight of being Black in America. Perhaps they defined themselves as just Creole in order to not feel erased, even though the Louisiana French Creole they speak is a mixture of French and several West African languages, including Mande, Ewe, and Yoruba."

"He said, "You're Creole, you're Black. There is no white Creole. We're mixed people."

"We had to move to save our families, move to get better jobs and earn money, or move because we had this unwavering belief, despite endless oppression, that there was a different type of beauty to be found in another zip code."

"White people just could not leave Black people alone, and their constant meddling in our lives is one of the biggest reasons why we continue to be displaced, disrespected, disenfranchised, and murdered." ( )