Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to

Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging

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?

â€œA thoughtful, beautiful meditation on what makes us who we are . . . and the values and ideals that bind us together as Americans.â€â€”Barack Obama

â€œA rich and revealing memoir . . .Â FuturefaceÂ raises urgent questions having to do with history and complicity.â€â€”The New York Times

The daughter of a Burmese mother and a white American father, Alex Wagner grew up thinking of herself as a â€œfuturefaceâ€â€”an avatar of a mixed-race future when all races would merge into a brown singularity. But when one family mystery leads to another, Wagnerâ€™s post-racial ideals fray as she becomes obsessed with the specifics of her own familyâ€™s racial and ethnic history.

Drawn into the wild world of ancestry, she embarks upon a quest around the worldâ€”and into her own DNAâ€”to answer the ultimate questions of who she really is and where she belongs. The journey takes her from Burma to Luxembourg, from ruined colonial capitals with records written on banana leaves to Mormon databases, genetic labs, and the rest of the twenty-first-century genealogy complex. But soon 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 itâ€™s caused us?

Wagner weaves together fascinating history, genetic science, and sociology but is really after deeper stuff than her own ancestry: in a time of conflict over who we are as a country, she tries to find the story where we all belong.

Praise for Futureface

â€œSmart, searching . . . Meditating on our ancestors, as Wagnerâ€™s own story shows, can suggest better ways of being ourselves.â€â€”Maud Newton, The New York Times Book Review

â€œSincere and instructive . . . This timely reflection on American identity, with a bonus exposÃ© of DNA ancestry testing, deserves a wide audience.â€â€”Library Journal

â€œThe narrative is partÂ Mary Roachâ€“style participation-heavy research, part family history, and part exploration of existential loneliness. . . . The journey is worth taking.â€â€”Kirkus Reviews

â€œ[A] ruminative exploration of ethnicity and identity . . . Wagnerâ€™s odyssey is an effective riposte to anti-immigrant politics.â€â€”Publishers WeeklyÂ
Country USA
Manufacturer One World
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2018-04-17
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	One World
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2018-04-17
Format	Kindle eBook

Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging

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