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"An acclaimed journalist travels the globe to solve the mystery of her ancestry, confronting the question at the heart of the American experience of immigration, race, and identity: Who are my people? Alex Wagner has always been fascinated by stories of exile and migration. Her father's ancestors immigrated to the United States from Ireland and Luxembourg. Her mother fled Rangoon in the 1960s, escaping Burma's military dictatorship. In her professional life, Wagner reported from the Arizona-Mexico border, where agents, drones, cameras, and military hardware guarded the line between two nations. She listened to debates about whether the United States should be a melting pot or a salad bowl. She knew that moving from one land to another--and the accompanying recombination of individual and tribal identities--was the story of America. And she was happy that her own mixed-race ancestry and late twentieth-century education had taught her that identity is mutable and meaningless, a thing we make rather than a thing we are. When a cousin's offhand comment threw a mystery into her personal story--introducing the possibility of an exciting new twist in her already complex family history--Wagner was suddenly awakened to her own deep hunger to be something, to belong, to have an identity that mattered, a tribe of her own. Intoxicated by the possibility, she became determined to investigate her genealogy. So she set off on a quest to find the truth about her family history. The journey takes Wagner from Burma to Luxembourg, from ruined colonial capitals with records written on banana leaves to Mormon databases and high-tech genetic labs. As she gets closer to solving the mystery of her own ancestry, she begins to grapple with a deeper question: Does it matter? Is our enduring obsession with blood and land, race and identity, worth all the trouble it's caused us? The answers can be found in this deeply personal account of her search for belonging, a meditation on the things that define us as insiders and outsiders and make us think in terms of "us" and "them." In this time of conflict over who we are as a country, when so much emphasis is placed on ethnic, religious, and national divisions, Futureface constructs a narrative where we all belong."--provided by publisher.
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Subjects
Genetic genealogy, Families, Race identity, Family, Racially mixed people, Genealogy, History, New York Times reviewed, Travel, Journalists, Biography, Women journalists, Burmese Americans, Identity (Psychology), Belonging (Social psychology), BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Personal Memoirs, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Emigration & ImmigrationPeople
Alex WagnerPlaces
United StatesShowing 4 featured editions. View all 4 editions?
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1
Futureface: A Family Mystery, a Search for Identity, and the Truth about Belonging
2020, Random House Children's Books
in English
1984896636 9781984896636
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2
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging
Jan 08, 2019, One World
paperback
0812987500 9780812987508
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3
Futureface: a family mystery, an epic quest, and the secret to belonging
2018
in English
- First edition.
0812997948 9780812997941
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aaaa
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4
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging
Publish date unknown, Random House Audio
audio cd
0525494529 9780525494522
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-338).
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