Description: In the tradition of "The Color of Water" comes a powerful story about race and identity, as viewed through the lens of one American family across three generations.
Brief description:
W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time, which Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley named as one of the best nonfiction books of 2003. A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and three children.
Review Quotes:
PRAISE FOR EVER IS A LONG TIME: "A gift to everyone who reads it, a book that is at once a touching family memoir and an attempt--successful--to come to terms with the author's past.... It is, in all respects, an exemplary and admirable piece of work." - Washington Post
"Compelling...by turns a charming remembrance of a rural childhood and a chilling reminder of racism's legacy." - BookPage
"Eubank's memoir is written in clear, accessible prose...his straightforward manner makes the emotional issues and difficult memories all the more poignant." - The Sun Herald
"Ralph Eubanks's Mississippi detective story wrapped in a memoir is a remarkable journey back to the civil rights future. This wistful little book holds a significance as rich as Delta loam." - David Levering Lewis, author of WEB DU BOIS: The Fight for Equality and the American Century
Eubanks pieces together this intricate story across three generations of his family, and in turn sheds powerful new light on the complex story of race and identity in these United States. A pleasure to read, a poignant American story not to be missed. - Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps
Eubanks's grandparents created an interracial family in rural Alabama nearly a century ago. Now he has taken his family's story and used it to explore our changing AMerican ideas about what to make of our ancestries. His work should inspire all of us to think anew about our country. - K. Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
Eubanks writes with a novelist's sense of story and a poet's eye for language and detail. Most important, though, he writes with sensitivity, understanding, and Socratic wisdom. This is not just an important book for these timse--it's a book for all time. - Steve Yarbrough, author of Prisoners of War