Rachel Jamison Webster learned she is related to Benjamin Banneker at a cousins' wedding. The news was unexpected, not only because of Banneker's place in history but also because the author is white.
When poet and creative writer Rachel Jamison Webster attended a cousin's wedding, she was surprised to discover that her family is related to famed mathematician and naturalist Benjamin Banneker.
The conversations between Webster and her cousins are among the more compelling parts of the book, providing a platform for the cousins to share the implications of their ancestry as Black people. As Edwin Lee notes, theirs"is a mixed family, but it is also an African American family that goes back to before the founding of the country. There aren't hardly any African American families that can do this kind of documentary verification.
Webster also notes that the historical record in this country contains comparatively little about the Black experience before Emancipation. Enslaved people were forbidden to read or write, and most Black people didn't appear in censuses by name before 1870. As such, she explains in the Author's Note,"I allowed myself to imagine their thoughts and feelings, because I wanted them to live on the page as more than just names and dates.
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