{ "item_title" : "The Trouble of Color", "item_author" : [" Martha S. Jones "], "item_description" : "A memoir of family, color, and being Black, white, and other in America, from a preeminent historianIntimate and searching. --Natasha Trethewey, New York Times-bestselling author of Memorial DriveNamed a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian - TIME Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones's right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: Who do you think you are? Now a prizewinning scholar of Black history, Jones delves into her family's past for answers. In every generation since her great-great-great-grandmother survived enslavement to raise a free family, color determined her ancestors' lives. But the color line was shifting and jagged, not fixed and straight. Some backed away from it, others skipped along it, and others still were cut deep by its sharp teeth. Journeying across centuries, from rural Kentucky and small-town North Carolina to New York City and its suburbs, The Trouble of Color is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/54/160/100/1541601009_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "30.00", "online_price" : "30.00", "our_price" : "30.00", "club_price" : "30.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "30.00" } }

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As Martha S. Jones gave a halting presentation about Franz Fanon in an undergraduate Black sociology course, her classmate, the leader of the Black Student Union, interrupted her, saying, “Who do you think you are?” The exchange startled and haunted her: “Never before had someone so openly demanded, goaded, and nearly shamed me into explaining who I thought I was.” Jones’ father was descended from enslaved people, while her mother came from German, Austrian and Irish immigrants. She notes that her genes were “expressed in skin too light, features too fine, hair too limp. I am the heir of misunderstanding, misapprehension, and mistaken identity.” It's not surprising that Jones became a historian of how American democracy has been shaped by Black Americans. In The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, she traces her father’s side of the family back five generations, writing with precision, grace and loving insight into how color affected their lives. “As far back as I can know,” she writes, “my people have been caught up along the jagged color line. . . . We’ve skipped, hopped, and danced an awkward two-step. . . . We played possum and trickster, stood wide-eyed and defiant, while tragedy in its many guises tracked us, looking to take us out.”

Read our Q&A with Martha S. Jones, author of ‘The Trouble of Color.’ 

Relying on years of extensive research, family records and interviews, Jones constructs a moving narrative, bringing her ancestors to life. She begins with her great-great-great-grandmother Nancy Bell Graves, born in 1808 in Danville, Kentucky, whose maiden name, “Bell,” was the same as the family who enslaved her. Graves’ photograph shows that her skin was not “ebony or deep brown” but “closer in tone to the white bonnet on her head.” While it’s probable that Nancy’s father was a member of the enslaving family, Jones notes that “so much of the historical record was written with silence.” That silence continued to stymie her when, for instance, a Danville librarian discouraged her research. “What you’re saying implicates some of Danville’s most important families,” she warned. Jones’ writing, both in skill and subject matter, is reminiscent of Tiya Miles’ biography of Harriet Tubman, Night Flyer, and her National Book Award-winning All That She Carried. The Trouble of Color is a genealogy with staying power that will change the way readers understand race.