Synopsis

An inspiring memoir about the author’s lifelong quest for racial reconciliation, the love that sustains his interracial family in contemporary Mississippi, and the “Yes we can!” hope for American renewal that fades after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and the despair-driven rise of Black Lives Matter.What has happened to the dream of beloved community embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement of the early 1960s—the vision of a just, humane, and colorblind America, a nation of “black and white together” animated by the spirit of mutual respect and strengthened by the bonds of brotherly love? As Adam Gussow shows in this urgently needed new book, the dream, although pressured on every front, remains alive.At the heart of My Family and I is Gussow’s determination, in King’s terms, to live out the true meaning of America’s creed—a quest for transracial brotherhood that takes him from a blues partnership forged on the streets of 1980s Harlem through graduate training at Princeton and, decades later, a transformative course on the blues literary tradition that he shares with inmates at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm.Anchoring Gussow’s quest is a story of enduring love: a playful, soulful interracial romance between the newly hired professor at Ole Miss and his soon-to-be-wife Sherrie that blossoms with the birth of a musically gifted son, Shaun. As America explodes with protest and riots in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd, as social justice fundamentalists insist on stigmatizing whiteness and hardening the color line rather than healing the divisions that plague us, Gussow is forced to fight for what he loves—not just the sanctity of his family circle, but King’s dream of beloved community.My Family and I gifts the reader with hope for a future beyond America’s seemingly insoluble racial dilemmas.

About The Author

Adam Gussow is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi and a professional blues harmonica player and teacher. The author of many books on the blues, including Mister Satan’s Apprentice: A Blues Memoir and Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition, he earned an AB and PhD from Princeton and an MA from Columbia. Satan & Adam, a 2018 documentary about his thirty-year, Harlem-based partnership with bluesman Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee, screened on Netflix for several years. Gussow’s many honors include the C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, the John G. Cawelti Award for Best Textbook/Primer in Popular and American Culture, and the Living Blues Award for Best Blues Book of 2017. His article, “Howard Men: Prince Jones, Carlton Jones, and the Evasions of Ta-Nehisi Coates,” was a Quillette Editors’ Choice of 2023.