{"id":6487,"date":"2018-04-30T09:17:47","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T08:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/?p=6487"},"modified":"2018-04-25T11:24:23","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T10:24:23","slug":"books-on-monday-futureface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/books-on-monday-futureface\/","title":{"rendered":"Books on Monday: Futureface"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging<\/span>\u00a0by\u00a0Alex Wagner<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
by\u00a0Alex Wagner
<\/div><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
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:\u00a0Who are my people?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA rich and revealing memoir . . .\u00a0Futureface\u00a0raises urgent questions having to do with history and complicity.\u201d<\/em>\u2014The New York Times<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Alex Wagner has always been fascinated by stories of exile and migration. Her father\u2019s ancestors immigrated to the United States from Ireland and Luxembourg. Her mother fled Rangoon in the 1960s, escaping Burma\u2019s 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\u2014and the accompanying recombination of individual and tribal identities\u2014was 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.<\/p>\n

When a cousin\u2019s offhand comment threw a mystery into her personal story\u2013introducing the possibility of an exciting new twist in her already complex family history\u2014Wagner was suddenly awakened to her own deep hunger to be\u00a0something,<\/i>\u00a0to belong,\u00a0<\/i>to have\u00a0<\/i>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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s caused us?<\/p>\n

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 \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem.\u201d In this time of conflict over who we are as a country, when so much emphasis is placed on ethnic, religious, and national divisions,\u00a0Futureface<\/i>\u00a0constructs a narrative where we all belong.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlex Wagner is brilliant and hilarious.\u201d<\/em>\u2014Eddie Huang, bestselling author of\u00a0Fresh Off the Boat<\/i><\/b><\/div><\/div>