Black Is the Body

An extraordinary, exquisitely written memoir (of sorts) that looks at race—in a fearless, penetrating, honest, true way—in twelve telltale, connected, deeply personal essays that explore, up-close, the complexities and paradoxes, the haunting memories and ambushing realities of growing up black in the South with a family name inherited from a white man, of getting a PhD from Yale, of marrying a white man from the North, of adopting two babies from Ethiopia, of teaching at a white college and living in America's New England today. From the acclaimed editor of Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten ("Superb," Arnold Rampersad; "A major contribution," Henry Louis Gates; "Magnificent," Washington Post)."I am black—and brown, too," writes Emily Bernard. "Brown is the body I was born into. Black is the body of the stories I tell." And the storytelling, and the mystery of Bernard's storytelling, of getting...