Research Catalog

Title

Futureface : a family mystery, an epic quest, and the secret to belonging / Alex Wagner.

Author

Wagner, Alex

Publication

• New York : One World, [2018]
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 338 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

"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.

Alternative Title

• Future face
• Stories we tell ourselves

Subjects

• Families
• United States
• Families > History
• Biographies
• History
• United States > Genealogy
• Genealogy
• Racially mixed people > Race identity > United States
• Wagner, Alex > Family
• Genetic genealogy

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Genealogy.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages [333]-338).

Call Number

JFD 18-2906

ISBN

• 9780812997941
• 0812997948

OCLC

968310759

Author

Wagner, Alex, author.

Title

Futureface : a family mystery, an epic quest, and the secret to belonging / Alex Wagner.

Publisher

New York : One World, [2018]

Copyright Date

©2018

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages [333]-338).

Note

Pre-publication title: Stories we tell ourselves

Research Call Number

JFD 18-2906