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Published by Emancipation Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
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.
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.
Product Details
- Publisher: Emancipation Books (April 2, 2025)
- Length: 336 pages
- ISBN13: 9798888457658
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Raves and Reviews
“My Family and I is a remarkable and thought-provoking book that offers an intimate exploration of race, identity, and the pursuit of beloved community in contemporary America. Gussow eloquently argues that the reification of so-called racial identities reflects long-standing divisions that we must acknowledge, do not need to maintain, and should arguably destroy.”
– Dr. Sheena Michele Mason, author of The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race is the Future of Antiracism
“In an America increasingly divided by the clash between those who seek power in the reductive, skin-deep world of identity politics and those who wish to remain within our greater humanity, Adam Gussow's My Family and I offers a powerful argument for the latter. Gussow’s refusal to betray his humanity for this nefarious ideology is what gives this book of his its enduring and enlightening power. Most of all, it gives us hope.”
– Eli Steele, filmmaker and director of Resegregating America (2021), What Killed Michael Brown? (2020), and How Jack Became Black (2018)
“Gussow’s harrowing account of attending an anti-racist workshop is an edgy parable on the dangers of thinking in racial categories. He is a first-rate scholar whose earlier work probed racial wounds in the American past, but his stimulating new study lets us see that racial healing can be on the horizon in our society.”
– Charles Reagan Wilson, editor-in-chief, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
“My Family and I: A Mississippi Memoir is an unflinchingly challenging, provocative book that demands nuanced, careful thought. As an Ashkenazi Jewish and Black woman, I am grateful for the challenge that Adam Gussow’s book provides, and for the ways in which I was forced to consider my own belief systems as I read. What a gift.”
– Marra B. Gad, author of The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl
“Adam Gussow’s quest to prove the possibility of a transracial beloved community takes him on a transformative odyssey from the streets and clubs of Harlem to Princeton to a revelatory life in contemporary Mississippi, playing and teaching the blues. More than a memoir, the lived experience of My Family and I boldly challenges racial orthodoxy at a critical moment in American history.”
– Jerry Wasserman, author of Life Could Be a Dream: African American Blues, R&B, Gospel & Doo Wop, 1946-56
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