Awards

• Commended for L.A. Times Book Prize (Biography) 2011
• Short-listed for Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award (Nonfiction) 2012

Overview

In a dramatic, moving work of historical reporting and personal discovery, an award-winning journalist sets out to trace the story of what happened to his parents, a fascinating but star-crossed interracial couple, and arrives at a new understanding of the family dramas that shaped their lives—and his own. In a dramatic, moving work of historical reporting and personal discovery, Mark Whitaker, award-winning journalist, sets out to trace the story of what happened to his parents, a fascinating but star-crossed interracial couple, and arrives at a new understanding of the family dramas that shaped their lives—and his own. His father, “Syl” Whitaker, was the charismatic grandson of slaves who grew up the child of black undertakers from Pittsburgh and went on to become a groundbreaking scholar of Africa. His mother, Jeanne Theis, was a shy World War II refugee from France whose father, a Huguenot pastor, helped hide thousands of Jews from the Nazis and Vichy police. They met in the mid-1950s, when he was a college student and she was his professor, and they carried on a secret romance for more than a year before marrying and having two boys. Eventually they split in a bitter divorce that was followed by decades of unhappiness as his mother coped with self-recrimination and depression while trying to raise her sons by herself, and his father spiraled into an alcoholic descent that destroyed his once meteoric career. Based on extensive interviews and documentary research as well as his own personal recollections and insights, My Long Trip Home is a reporter’s search for the factual and emotional truth about a complicated and compelling family, a successful adult’s exploration of how he rose from a turbulent childhood to a groundbreaking career, and, ultimately, a son’s haunting meditation on the nature of love, loss, identity, and forgiveness.

Full Product Details

9781451627541

Table of Contents

Reviews

[a] poignant memoir...Whitaker is unsparing in his account of his father's sins and the scars they inflicted...but the author filters his profile through a rich reflection and understanding. Like Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father , Whitaker's memoir is in many ways an iconic story of the post-civil rights era, one in which transcending racial barriers liberates people to succeed--and fail--in their own peculiar ways. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

This is one of the most beautifully written and skillfully reported memoirs I have ever read. Searching to unlock the puzzle of his parents' lives, Whitaker writes with empathy and insight, shifting seamlessly between a child's recollection and an adult perspective. This story will capture your heart from start to finish. <p><p>--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals

Author Information

Mark Whitaker is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, My Long Trip Home. The former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, he was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, where he rose to become the first African-American leader of a national newsweekly.

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