Could a picturesque white house with a picket fence save the world?
What if it was filled with children drawn together from around the
globe? And what if, within the yard, the lines of kin and skin, of
family and race, were deliberately knotted and twisted? In 1970, a
wild-eyed dreamer, Bob Guterl, believed it could. Bob was
determined to solve, in one stroke, the problems of overpopulation
and racism. The charming, larger-than-life lawyer and his brilliant
wife, Sheryl, a former homecoming queen, launched a radical
experiment to raise their two biological sons alongside four
children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx—the
so-called war zones of the American century. They moved to rural
New Jersey with dreams of creating what Bob described as a new
Noah’s ark, filled with “two of every race.” While the
venture made for a great photograph, with the proverbial
“casseroles and potato chips out for everyone,” the Brady
Brunch façade began to crack once reality seeped into the yard,
adding undue complexity to the ordinary drama of a big family.
Neighbors began to stare. Vacations went wrong. Joy and laughter
commingled with discomfort and alienation. Familial bonds
inevitably buckled. In the end, this picture-perfect family was no
longer, and memories of the idyllic undertaking were marred by
tragedy. In lyrical yet wrenching prose, Matthew Pratt Guterl, one
of the children, narrates a family saga of astonishing originality,
in which even the best intentions would prove woefully inadequate.
He takes us inside the clapboard house where Bob and Sheryl raised
their makeshift brood in a nation riven then as now by virulent
racism and xenophobia. Chronicling both the humor and pathos of
this experiment, he “opens a door to our dreams of what the idea
of family might make possible.” In the tradition of James
McBride’s The Color of Water, Skinfolk exposes the joys and
constraints of love, blood, and belonging, and the persistent river
of racial violence in America, past and present.
General
| Imprint: |
W W Norton & Co Inc
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Release date: |
2024 |
| Authors: |
Matthew Pratt Guterl
|
| Dimensions: |
210 x 140mm (L x W) |
| Pages: |
320 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-1-324-09449-4 |
| Categories: |
Books
|
| LSN: |
1-324-09449-4 |
| Barcode: |
9781324094494 |
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