The House at the End of the Road

Starred review from August 15, 2009
The first and most basic lesson of genealogy is to talk to your family. Eubanks ("Ever Is a Long Time") interviewed his mother to start to learn about his grandparents, Edna and Jim Richardson, an interracial couple who married, lived together, and raised a family in rural Alabama in the first years of the 20th century. While Eubanks begins by seeking his grandparents' motivations and their methods for subverting societal norms, his memoir eventually broadens to a thoughtful (though still personal) exploration of the construction of race and racial identity, particularly within families that cross the color line. He considers thought-provoking questions like the potential for communication between black and white family members. Eubanks concludes, among other things, that while his own generation threw off the yoke of segregation partly by forging a proud black self-identity, his children seem to see race as a tangible but uninteresting social factand to them, race is far less compelling than questions of justice and fairness. VERDICT Highly recommended, especially for memoir readers or patrons interested in thoughtful and personal considerations of race.Emily-Jane Dawson, Multnomah Cty. Lib., Portland, OR

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