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A carregar... The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White (1999)por Henry Wiencek
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Phenomenal and fascinating book. ( ) A grim and fascinating book. The amazing cruelty and self deception involved in slavery and in the post civil war era. the book raises and cannot answer the question of how a slave owner could own and treat a just a slave their half sisters and brothers. Unfortunately it is not very well written, wonderfully researched but the information is not as organized as it could be. For example, Wiencek writes about interviewing a person or going to a source of information and does not give the date. This is a remarkable account of a slaves and masters and the history after emanicipation. The orignial Hairstons were Scots who came to the United States and built an empire of plantations, worked by slaves, becoming some of the wealthiest people and greatest slave-holders in the South. Henry Wiencek was researching historic houses, when he met Judge Peter Hairston, of Coouleemee plantation, who made available his enormous archive, and introduced Wiencek to Squire Hairston, a descendent of the slaves who worked the plantation. For the next seven years, Wiencek would travel around the country digging up old documents and winning the confidence of various Hairstons, mostly the Black families, tracing the history of all the Hairstons. He gives us the history of various representatives Hairstons: plantation owners, soldiers, educators, actors, and their struggle to overcome adversity and deal with the wounds of the past. I occasionally found this rather heavy going, but it is wonderful to have read it and to ponder the Hairistons as a microcosm of American history. An amazing piece of research and writing. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award The Hairstonsis the extraordinary story of the largest family in America, the Hairston clan. With several thousand black and white members, the Hairstons share a complex and compelling history: divided in the time of slavery, they have come to embrace their past as one family. The black family's story is most exceptional. It is the account of the rise of a remarkable people--the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of slaves--who took their rightful place in mainstream America. In contrast, it has been the fate of the white family--once one of the wealthiest in America--to endure the decline and fall of the Old South, and to become an apparent metaphor for that demise. But the family's fall from grace is only part of the tale. Beneath the surface lay a hidden history--the history of slavery's curse and how that curse plagued slaveholders for generations. For the past seven years, journalist Wiencek has listened raptly to the tales of hundreds of Hairston relatives, including the aging scions of both the white and black clans. He has crisscrossed the old plantation country in Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi to seek out the descendants of slaves. Visiting family reunions, interviewing family members, and exploring old plantations, Wiencek combs the far-reaching branches of the Hairston family tree to gather anecdotes from members about their ancestors and piece together a family history that involves the experiences of both plantation owners and their slaves. He expertly weaves the Hairstons' stories from all sides of historical events like slave emancipation, Reconstruction, school segregation, and lynching. Paradoxically, Wiencek demonstrates that these families found that the way to come to terms with the past was to embrace it, and this lyrical work, a parable of redemption, may in the end serve as a vital contribution to our nation's attempt to undo the twisted historical legacy of the past. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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