{"id":15672,"date":"2011-08-17T04:34:15","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T04:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=15672"},"modified":"2016-04-01T16:06:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T16:06:55","slug":"my-long-trip-home-a-family-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=15672","title":{"rendered":"My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/books.simonandschuster.com\/My-Long-Trip-Home\/Mark-Whitaker\/9781451627541\" target=\"_blank\">My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/books.simonandschuster.com\" target=\"_blank\">Simon and Schuster<\/a><br \/>\nOctober 2011<br \/>\n368 pages<br \/>\nHardcover ISBN-10: 1451627548; ISBN-13: 9781451627541<br \/>\neBook ISBN-10: 1451627564; ISBN-13: 9781451627565<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mark_Whitaker\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Whitaker<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/books.simonandschuster.com\/My-Long-Trip-Home\/Mark-Whitaker\/9781451627541\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net\/book_images\/cvr9781451627565_9781451627565.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a dramatic, moving work of historical reporting and personal discovery, Mark Whitaker, award-winning journalist, sets out to trace the story of what happened to his parents, a fascinating but star-crossed interracial couple, and arrives at a new understanding of the family dramas that shaped their lives\u2014and his own.<\/p>\n<p>His father, &#8220;Syl&#8221; Whitaker, was the charismatic grandson of slaves who grew up the child of black undertakers from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pittsburgh\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsburgh<\/a> and went on to become a groundbreaking scholar of Africa. His mother, Jeanne Theis, was a shy <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/World_War_II\" target=\"_blank\">World War II<\/a> refugee from France whose father, a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Huguenot\" target=\"_blank\">Huguenot<\/a> pastor, helped hide thousands of Jews from the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nazi_Germany\" target=\"_blank\">Nazis<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vichy_France\" target=\"_blank\">Vichy<\/a> police. They met in the mid-1950s, <strong>when he was a college student and she was his professor<\/strong>, and they carried on a secret romance for more than a year before marrying and having two boys. Eventually they split in a bitter divorce that was followed by decades of unhappiness as his mother coped with self-recrimination and depression while trying to raise her sons by herself, and his father spiraled into an alcoholic descent that destroyed his once meteoric career.<\/p>\n<p>Based on extensive interviews and documentary research as well as his own personal recollections and insights, <em>My Long Trip Home<\/em> is a reporter&#8217;s search for the factual and emotional truth about a complicated and compelling family, a successful adult&#8217;s exploration of how he rose from a turbulent childhood to a groundbreaking career, and, ultimately, a son&#8217;s haunting meditation on the nature of love, loss, identity, and forgiveness.<\/p>\n<p><object id=\"flashObj\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"350\" height=\"243\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#FFFFFF\" \/><param name=\"flashVars\" value=\"videoId=1071050466001&amp;linkBaseURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.simonandschuster.com%2Fmultimedia%3Fvideo%3D1071050466001&amp;playerID=2281217001&amp;playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAGF4K-k~,kv7GNuiTi7CpjmDZQ0D07TB_3A6MnYYS&amp;domain=embed&amp;dynamicStreaming=true\" \/><param name=\"base\" value=\"http:\/\/admin.brightcove.com\" \/><param name=\"seamlesstabbing\" value=\"false\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"swLiveConnect\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/c.brightcove.com\/services\/viewer\/federated_f9?isVid=1\" \/><param name=\"name\" value=\"flashObj\" \/><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"videoId=1071050466001&amp;linkBaseURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.simonandschuster.com%2Fmultimedia%3Fvideo%3D1071050466001&amp;playerID=2281217001&amp;playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAGF4K-k~,kv7GNuiTi7CpjmDZQ0D07TB_3A6MnYYS&amp;domain=embed&amp;dynamicStreaming=true\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed id=\"flashObj\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"350\" height=\"243\" src=\"http:\/\/c.brightcove.com\/services\/viewer\/federated_f9?isVid=1\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" swliveconnect=\"true\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" flashvars=\"videoId=1071050466001&amp;linkBaseURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.simonandschuster.com%2Fmultimedia%3Fvideo%3D1071050466001&amp;playerID=2281217001&amp;playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAGF4K-k~,kv7GNuiTi7CpjmDZQ0D07TB_3A6MnYYS&amp;domain=embed&amp;dynamicStreaming=true\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\" base=\"http:\/\/admin.brightcove.com\" seamlesstabbing=\"false\" name=\"flashObj\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir Simon and Schuster October 2011 368 pages Hardcover ISBN-10: 1451627548; ISBN-13: 9781451627541 eBook ISBN-10: 1451627564; ISBN-13: 9781451627565 Mark Whitaker In a dramatic, moving work of historical reporting and personal discovery, Mark Whitaker, award-winning journalist, sets out to trace the story of what happened to his parents, a fascinating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,11,8,17,20],"tags":[7228,7229,969],"class_list":["post-15672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-books","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-usa","tag-mark-whitaker","tag-simon-and-schuster","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46380,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15672\/revisions\/46380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}