Fortune

As an adult with a disability, I've often expressed that while eugenics laws are, for the most part, a thing of the past, they are alive and well in the institutions, systems, cultures, and beliefs and practices that surround us.

It is difficult to express how I felt reading Lisa Sharon Harper's "Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World - and How to Repair It All."

Harper has spent three decades exploring ten generations of her family's history through DNA research, oral histories, interviews, and genealogy. The result is, of course, more than simply this book as it would be nearly impossible to contain the power of such research within the less than 300 pages captured in print here. However, this book, "Fortune," is a remarkable effort that draws on Harper's experience as she recovers the beauty of her heritage while simultaneously exposing the brokenness that race has wrought in America. As a longtime Christian activist, it is not surprising that Harper winds down this journey by casting a vision for collective repair.

It should be noted, and should be expected for those who know Harper's work, that "Fortune" is not an entertaining read. Harper is not here to play games. She is not here to wax eloquently and to soften the edges. Harper long has been and continues to be a truth-teller and a story weaver and an exposer of difficult to accept facts brought to life because if we are to heal our nation and all of its peoples these are facts we must be willing to admit, face, and offer repentance.

I will confess that it took me a couple chapters to match rhythms with Harper, a writer who is both passionate and very matter-of-fact. There is much love within these pages, though it's a love that reaches higher and demands more and seeks the holy.

With a foreword by Otis Moss III, "Fortune" for me elicited introspection and challenge. I was struck by the beauty that Harper created as she discovered the stories of her family, both painful and wondrous, and I found myself devastated as those stories became the foundation for the stories of this nation's roots with racist structures, laws, and ideologies. It's the weaving together of this tapestry that makes "Fortune" such a remarkable work of impact and inspiration. When I say inspiration, of course, I speak not of the kind of inspiration that leads to feel-good warm and fuzzies but of strengthened accountability and a sense of call to do more than I am doing now.

"Fortune" is most definitely not a "do nothing" book. It is a book that demands that we all do something.

All the words that I can think of to describe "Fortune" feel inadequate. Harper's research into her family's history is remarkable, painful and exhilarating and remarkable and so much more. Harper's ability to weave this history into this nation's history is both intimate and universal. Yet, it is truly Harper's ability to somehow create this tapestry in the third and final part of "Fortune" that for me clinches this book's brilliance. It makes it clear that this is the work of healing our nation and our world, but also of healing our neighborhoods and families and children and adults.

I've long had a deep appreciation for Harper's work and, in some ways, I can't help but feel like much of Harper's life and Harper's work has led her to writing "Fortune" and has equipped her for this difficult task. It is more than simply the research, though certainly it is profound. It is the soul work that she had to do in order to write with such clarity, intelligence, compassion, and vision.

Both masterful in her storytelling and visionary in her social awareness, Lisa Sharon Harper has created a work of profound wonder with "Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World - and How to Repair It All."

Lisa Sharon Harper delves deep into her family history, tracing her roots back as far as possible in spite of incomplete records. She shares her findings in an emotional narrative, guiding the reader from the earliest origins of her family lineage to the present day and her own upbringing. The stories in this narrative are not unique to her family and are examples of the realities that can be found in the unspoken history of enslavement and its impact on racial issues today. Harper brings to light a history that many have chosen to ignore, and even ban, but she also offers a path to reconciliation and restoration if leaders would choose to follow it.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC.

This winter, I had the opportunity to be a member of the launch team for Lisa Sharon Harper's compelling new work, "Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World--and How to Repair It All." If you are already a fan of LSH, let me just say... she has leveled up once again!
This autobiographical/genealogically rooted narrative guides the reader on a powerful journey through America's history that compels them to consider how their own family's story intersects with the racial trauma of Lisa's family.

An excellent way to learn history, and its highly personal effects on family and heritage. This is an important read.

I appreciated the idea that the author presents that who we are comes, at least in part, from our ancestors, and I really loved the stories she weaved about her own family. I appreciate her optimism about the future. The book made me think a lot more about the stories I've heard about my own family, and to think through what life might have been like for them several generations ago.