Description

An unexpected family photograph leads Dionne Ford to uncover the stories of her enslaved female ancestors reclaim their power and begin to heal

Countless Black Americans descended from slavery are related to the enslavers who bought and sold their ancestors Among them is Dionne Ford whose great grandmother was the last of six children born to a Louisiana cotton broker and the enslaved woman he received as a wedding gift

What shapes does this kind of intergenerational trauma take In these pages which move between her inner life and deep research Ford tells us It manifests as alcoholism and posttraumatic stress it finds echoes in her own experience of sexual abuse at the hands of a relative and in the ways in which she builds her own interracial family

To heal Ford tries a wide range of therapies lifestyle changes and recovery meetings Anything she writes to keep from going back there But what she learns is that she needs to go back there to return to her female ancestors and unearth what she can about them to start to feel whole