When Norris decided to do some reporting within her own family, she found much that had been left unsaid, and the secrets she uncovered placed her book on a decidedly more personal path, blending memoir with reportage. The project began with an extensive NPR series in which she asked a diverse group of voters in York, Pa., questions such as "Do white Americans underestimate discrimination?" "Do blacks make too much of it?" She elicited frank and illuminating perspectives on racial identity.
Originally, Norris, who is black, set out with a fairly straightforward endeavor: In 2009, she intended to write a book about the national dialogue on race following Barack Obama's historic campaign. "You know it's there, but you can't prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, how it colors a particular situation." "Here is the conundrum of racism," she writes. In her absorbing new memoir, "The Grace of Silence," journalist Michele Norris (co-host of NPR's "All Things Considered") explores race within her family history while tracing its complex legacy in the United States. There's no easy way through or around it, and apparently even the election of the nation's first black president has done little to change our collective fumbling. In fact, race is probably what makes us most uncomfortable, and it's a conversation many people tend to avoid. The result is a rich and extraordinary family memoir-filled with stories that elegantly explore the power of silence and secrets-that boldly examines racial legacy and what it means to be an American.Available for purchase at:Apple - Audiobook (Downloadable format)Audible - Audiobook (Downloadable format)audiobooks.By Michele Norris (Pantheon 185 pages $24.95)Īs cultural taboos go, race is right up there with money and sex. These revelations-from her father’s shooting by a Birmingham police officer to her maternal grandmother’s job as an itinerant Aunt Jemima in the Midwest-inspired a bracing journey into her family’s past, from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South.
While exploring the hidden conversation on race unfolding throughout America in the wake of President Obama’s election, Michele Norris discovered that there were painful secrets within her own family that had been willfully withheld. A profoundly moving and deeply personal memoir by the co-host of National Public Radio’s flagship program All Things Considered.
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