Overview

"A haunting, poignant story of growing up in a mixed-race family in 1970s New Jersey, in the tradition of The Color of Water. Magnanimous and charming, Bob Guterl knew that he could solve the racial problems bedeviling postwar America. Determined to stave off impending global catastrophe, the larger-than-life judge and his resolute wife, Sheryl, launched a radical experiment, raising their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called ""war zones of the American century""―in a white clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town New Jersey. In lyrical, often searing prose, Matthew Guterl, a renowned historian of race and their third-eldest child, recounts the ultimately troubling story of his family; his racially diverse siblings; and his idealistic parents, with their miragelike dreams of creating a racial utopia in an otherwise all-white community. Chronicling the siblings' coming-of-age in a recalcitrant, discriminatory society, Skinfolk peers behind that white picket fence, revealing many of the racial issues that continue to plague Americans today."

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Skinfolk lays bare one family's dramatic attempt to create a kind of racial reckoning by offering up their own household as a model for integration and diversity. With unflinching eyes, Matthew Pratt Guterl examines his family experiment with an academic's precision, detailing the moments of transcendence, awkwardness, and longing. A fascinating read. -- Julia Scheeres, author of Jesus Land A chronicle of life, love, complexity, race, and above all, the meaning of the word 'family.' -- Jelani Cobb, dean of the Colombia Journalism School An achingly moving memoir...Matthew Pratt Guterl lays his scholar's eye over a complex narrative exploring the joys and limitations of love, family, and adoption. -- Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero I've long admired Matthew Pratt Guterl's histories of race and racism in America, and in this moving, beautifully written memoir, he shows us how those same histories shape our most intimate attachments. -- Natalia Molina, author of A Place at the Nayarit Matthew Pratt Guterl chronicles the struggle to build a family in the aftermath of war and social strife with grace and vulnerability...The story of this family is unforgettable in its embrace of the personal and the political. The notion of belonging is drawn and redrawn across these pages with honesty and abiding affection. A powerful read. -- Wendy S. Walters, author of Multiply/Divide Matthew Pratt Guterl's Skinfolk explores a question we all face: What makes us kin? This fascinating story of his family's utopian experiment teaches us that it takes more than blood to bind us together. Guterl walks along fraught lines of race, language, color, and history with compassion and grace. In some moments gripping and at others intimately at ease, Skinfolk opens a door to our dreams of what the idea of family might make possible. -- Martha S. Jones, author of Vanguard

Author Information

Matthew Pratt Guterl is the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies at Brown University. He is the award-winning author of four books, including Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe. He lives in Rhode Island. George Newbern has appeared in Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride II, Evening Star, Adventures in Babysitting, and many other films. On television, he has had roles on Scandal, Friends, Nip/Tuck, Hot in Cleveland, CSI, and more. He is also known for providing the voice of Superman in Justice League and for narrating audiobooks.

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