These days, it’s easier than ever to find distant and not so distant relatives with the swab of a cheek or a simple Facebook search. Genealogical webs unravel, time collapses, and a rush of painful and joyous stories fill the once unspoken gaps in family history. At the same time, it’s impossible to separate a family’s history from the bitter history of our nation. These unspooled mysteries of the past and the ways in which they illuminate and complicate the present are the subject of our May Book Club pick, Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing by Dionne Ford.

“If you are going to look for your enslaved ancestors,” Ford writes in the book’s prologue, “you will have to look for the people who enslaved them. […] This is a study in contrasts. Shadow. Light. Black. White. Joy. Pain. Victim. Perpetrator. You will find ephemera—editorials, photographs, wedding announcements—and atrocities—lynched uncles, your people as property in someone’s will, deed, or mortgage guarantee. You will also find the living— third cousins once removed, fifth cousins straight up, and descendants of the family that forced your family into slavery.”

Dionne Ford will be joining us to talk about her luminous memoir, Go Back and Get It on Thursday May 23 at 7 p.m. CDT / 8 p.m. EDT. You can order a copy of the book from our partners at Friendly City Books. [Note: This month we will be migrating the book club discussions to Streamyard from Zoom for a more streamlined recording experience.]