This book resonated with me in many ways. It fell flat for me in others. I am younger than this author as I was born before she finished high school. Our challenges would've been different but in ways relatable. My father is Black, and my mother is white. Although I have lightskin as a child, I was clearly perceived as Black. As an adult, I'm sometimes recognized as Black but sometimes thought to be Domican, Borican, or a different POC. I'm recognized to clearly not be white, but it isn't always clear I'm Black. I've always identified as Black as I was born before identifying as mixed was even an option on forms that collect racial data.

Race is a social construct, and situations like the author's really highlight the ridiculousness of how race is used in our society. Thanks to DNA advances, we now know the average Black person in the USA has anywhere from 10-25% or more of European ancestry. Dr. Henry Louis Gates himself is only about 54% West African even though he has 2 Black parents and 4 Black grandparents. Yet Blackness is more than the percentage of West African DNA an individual possesses.

This author can pass for white and is descended from folks who have extremely lightskin. Some were even mistaken as white. The author was challenged by an unambiguously Black man at university in the mid 70's and seemingly never got over it. She and all of her ancestors since slavery benefited from their access to whiteness via their complexion. That complexion being maintained through generations means her family actively participated in colorist beliefs and practices. It's not an accident at all that she's the complexion she is. Her ancestors chose, even down to her own parents, to marry other very lightskinned Black folks.

The author dismisses the idea that her Enslaved light skin ancestress, whom she looks like, could've participated in colorism or the rampant blue vein society and paper bag tests that start immediately post emancipation Now we know that's not true through the published writings of Charles W. Chesnutt. His short story, 'The Wife of his Youth,' features ex-Enslaved folks using skin color based discrimination against darker complexion Black folks in order to maintain a light skin, 'blue vein' Black community. This author is definitely educated enough to know this and is disingenuous in pretending her enslaved ancestress didn't participate in this deeply antiblack behavior. This section of the book feels like the author is still trying to prove something to the young man who challenged her at university. Only her tone in response proved he was correct to challenge her.

The author's ancestors were so successful precisely because of their lightskin privilege. As such, they definitely discriminated against other Black folks who didn't look unambiguously Black to maintain that complexion in their descendants. Whole Black social societies exist that this was their main function. It's still somewhat rampant today.

I know this from stories within my own Black family. My father was very dark skinned. He was called blue-black and blue gums within the Black Community growing up. His second wife, my stepmother, is very lightskinned and from a historically lightskin Black family. They married in their mid 40's but he told me that had he met her when they were young enough that they could've had kids he'd have likely not been welcome to date her by her parents. Now, her family was lovely and welcoming, but that was his experience growing up. Being Black with dark skin drastically impacts one's experience in society. This is backed by multiple scientific studies. It's important that colorism be acknowledged historically as well as in modern times.

I found the author's family history extremely interesting, fascinating even. My criticism isn't meant to deny the author's identity. I'm not saying she's not Black or that she doesn't deserve to be a subject matter expert on her studies of Black history. Nothing of the sort. She's still Black. Lightskin Black folks need to allow unambiguously Black folks to lead the discussion on the difficulty of moving through society in a Black body. Gatekeeping Blackness is important, and it's okay for her to be questioned by other members of the Black Community.

The tone of this memoir reminded me of the memoir Negroland by Margo Jefferson. Both women grew up in privileged families, and both women were reluctant to own their privilege as a result. They are also of a similar age, so maybe its a generational quirk.

This book is narrated by the author Martha S. Jones. I don't always think that authors should read their own books. I find this to be especially true with nonfiction. A good narrator truly helps nonfiction books to keep the narrative moving and not get bogged down in detail. Having said that, I actually quite enjoyed this authors voice and narration. Given the subject matter, it was informative to hear for oneself which words the author stressed and to hear the emotion in her voice. This was a good choice.

Thank you to Martha S. Jones, Hachette Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. All opinions and viewpoints expressed in this review are my own.

I loved and enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I really enjoyed the narrator, which is the Author herself, and the narration style.
I though this book was very interesting, a mix of memoir and family research but also the topic at hand, race and family history.

Thank you so much Hachette Audio and Netgalley for the free ALC, in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting look at both regular history *AND* family history within the author's own family tree, specifically within the confines of race, passing/not passing, and how that affects everyone.

While I found some of this book deeply interesting [and learned some very interesting history I had been unaware of], much of this book was [for me] confusing [with a very large cast of family members to keep track of], rather jumbled at times [lots of "then and now" scenarios], a plethora of minutia of the daily life of the author [which was, for me, not engaging at all and I will admit to checking out when this occured], and even when you finally find ot how this applies to the author [but not until the very end], I was left wondering just what the author was trying to convay and what we all were to learn from it.

The author narrates this book and even though she did have a propensity to speed the narration up, overall, she did a really good job and I was glad I was able to listen to this book. I would recommend the audiobook and would listen to her narrate again.

Thank you to NetGalley, Martha S. Jones, Basic Books and Hachette Audio/Basic Books for providing both the eBook and audiobook ARC's in exchange for an honest review.

I was hooked instantly. This was so interesting and sad but also hopeful. I was sad at first picturing people meeting at a Black Student Union when those are being taken away and colleges are losing funding for having them. We are going backwards.
I am into social history and family history so I was also interested in the way the author found her information. We all know researching black history is a lot harder.
Absolutely an amazing book. I have already told my friends about it.

Oh and I love the narration so much!

The Trouble of Color by Martha S Jones is a fascinating mix of memoir and family history research. The author narrates the audiobook herself, which I always love. Her research and backstory touch on the unique issues that face those who are both black and white

I think maybe this would have been easier to digest with the physical version of the book instead of audio. I got confused at times keeping up with all of the details, and it is difficult to skim back through an audiobook.

Recommended for those who love memoirs, genealogy, and learning about race relations in history.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the ALC.

The Trouble of Color is an interesting mix of memoir and family history. Martha Jones is a history professor who has written several books on black history.

Jones is descended from an extraordinary group of people of color, both enslaved and free. This book chronicles Jones’s search to uncover as much information as possible on each of her ancestors to add to the stories she heard growing up.

As far back as Jones can trace, her family has been mixed race. Some of them were able to pass as white. Each generation has had to decide how they will navigate the ever-shifting color line.

Martha Jones begins the book with a story about a time in college when a fellow black student questioned her black identity because she has light-skin and straight hair. I think it would have been helpful if Jones had then given a brief history of the development and changes over time of the concept of race in America.

Jones is sometimes mistaken for being white, which might lead some modern readers to also question her black identity. In the past she would have been seen as black because she has black ancestors. Jones’s white mother was even disowned by her family for marrying Jones’s black father, even though he could and did pass as white later in his life.

Unfortunately, the reader doesn’t get any of that background, not even about her parents until almost the end of the book. So Jones begins the book with her identity being questioned, and then doesn’t really interact with that idea until the end. Even then the topic isn’t explored in a larger way. It is only discussed in relation to herself and her family.

Since Martha Jones isn’t famous, she needed to at least begin by giving the reader her credentials. However, Jones doesn’t tell us about herself, and she expects the reader to not only care about her, but also to care about all of her ancestors, which is a pretty big ask for someone we don’t know.

For a memoir to be interesting the memorist needs to a.) be famous, b.) have an unusual life, or c.) their life needs to be clearly connected to the experiences of a larger audience. None of those criteria were fully met in this book. Criteria b. and or c. could have been easily met with some changes/additions. I think both Jones and her family are extraordinary people, but I think they could have been presented in a way that made that more apparent to the reader.

A smaller issue I had with the book is Jones’s inclusion of unnecessary details about her daily life. Much of the book recounts her search for information about her family. She will tell the reader about what she ate for breakfast, or about washing her face. I wasn’t interested in those details. I am, however, interested in the history books that Jones has written, and plan to look into them.

I listened to the audio version of this book and the author did the narration. She isn’t a professional narrator, but she does a good job. The production and audio quality were good. There weren’t any mistakes left in, which I have heard many times as an avid audiobook consumer.

Thanks to Hachette Audio through NetGalley who allowed me to listen to the audio version of this book.

While not normally a fan of family histories or memoirs, if Martha S. Jones writes a book, I'll read it.

The Trouble of Color is an exceptionally written book about the history of Jones' father's family. An historian by trade, Jones writes about the discrepancies she finds in her family's story from the ones she had always been told--it really was a perfect blend of personal narrative and well researched history. While the focus is on Jones' family, it paints a bigger picture about the history of racism in the US.

This was a truly unique read and Jones did a great job narrating the audio version. I would highly recommend that version to readers.

I have read the academic works of Martha Jones, and I have read her books for more general audiences. This book, though, was a revelation. A family memoir of life along the "jagged color line," Jones employs her skills as a historian to tell the story of her father's family, starting with Nancy Bell Graves in the early 1800s. By doing so, Jones exposes the fictions of race in the United States that nevertheless have a real impact on the daily lives of Black Americans, both in the past and the present. Writing this memoir poses significant challenges for Jones, who was trained as a historian. She is deliberate and clear when documents do not corroborate one another, or when they do not reveal what she wishes they would. She records her questions and wonderings, rather than fictionalizing the stories of her family and the ways they subverted and survived the color line. Her family story serves as a microhistory that illuminates questions of how we define race in ways that a more general, academic account could not, as well as engaging a different audience of reader. Jones also serving as the narrator of this audiobook adds to the sense of intimacy and immediacy. Jones is to be celebrated for exposing herself and her family so openly in service of this story. Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Martha Jones traces her family tree from slavery to the present. But she doesn't use a geanology website. She uses clues given to her by family members, letters, journals, and research at government offices and universities. This is a fascinating story of how people migrate, get together, and the lies that are told to deceive about race and ethnicity.

I found this book particularly interesting because Martha was born in the 50s and when she was in her 20s, she discovered her birth certificate listed her as white, when she is clearly not white. Her mother explained that the doctor did that to try to protect her and her family from the discrimination and hostility that people of color often experienced back then.

As someone who is interested in her family roots, I found this book a fascinating examination of what makes family. I listened to the audio book and the author narrated it. She made me feel like part of her family and on the journey of discovery with her. It was so wonderful.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the Audio ARC!

The Trouble of Color is an interesting exploration of the author's roots, her family identity, and what it all means in the racially charged world of today. I especially enjoyed the historical research regarding the ins and outs of her genealogy, who knew what, who didn't know who they really were, and everything in between.

Thanks to NetGalley (Edelweiss) and Publisher for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I was thoroughly mesmerized by Martha’s family story. Many people of black ancestry cannot go that far back on their family trees because of slavery, but Jones was able to unearth many stories from her ancestry with years of research. The cloudiness of the color line in America is brought home with the author’s story of her family.

I enjoy looking into family history and appreciated the work done by Jones to get a clearer picture of her family’s story. The fact that she had lighter skin made her a target in a Black studies class in college. She began to question her identity and slowly, through years of research, compiled this work, which focuses on the color line in America, which some people still want to make Black and white, but in reality, is a lot murkier than that, and it all began with white men raping their Black slave women and getting them pregnant.

The whole issue of colorism is fascinating to me, given that it wasn’t so long ago that miscegenation was illegal. The fact that Martha’s father could pass for white, and in fact on some legal documents, he was marked as white, had to have been hard to see for Jones, yet at the same time, she knew that her parents’ marriage was against the law. The fact that her father could pass as white is a whole other story, and Jones captures her thoughts as well as how society treated people of color over the years.

Jones is an able narrator, both in prose, and as one who voices her own words as the teller of her family’s truths. Not only is she a gifted historian and writer, but she also narrates very well, too. I’m going to be looking into more of this author’s work.

An American Historian's family history and heritage through the trouble of color- being too little or too much. Martha S. Jones is such a skilled historian and great writer. I enjoyed hearing about her personal experience with colorism. Hearing about her journey to discover more about her ancestors was fascinating. It felt like she was a detective with so much care and attention to detail she gave. When she discovered more about Nancy and Betty, I celebrated her joy. She was an active participant in uncovering more knowledge and connection with those who came before her. I smiled at memories she shared about her summers with Musie. Her emotional intelligence is profound. Her care and tenderness in this book made me grateful as a reader.

Thank you a Netgalley and publishers for this ARC!