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

Alex Wagner has always been fascinated by stories of exile and migration. Her fatherâ€™s ancestors immigrated to the United States from Ireland and Luxembourg. Her mother fled Rangoon in the 1960s, escaping Burmaâ€™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 anotherâ€”and the accompanying recombination of individual and tribal identitiesâ€”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 cousinâ€™s offhand comment threw a mystery into her personal storyâ€“introducing the possibility of an exciting new twist in her already complex family historyâ€”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 itâ€™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 â€œusâ€ and â€œthem.â€ 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.

â€œAlex Wagner is brilliant and hilarious.â€â€”Eddie Huang, bestselling author of Fresh Off the Boat
Country USA
Manufacturer One World
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2018-04-17
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812997941

Country	USA
Manufacturer	One World
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2018-04-17
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812997941

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

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