Claiming Kin: Confronting the History of an African American Family (Hardcover)

by Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs (Author) "I'd always heard we had the wrong last name..." (more)
Key Phrases: Aunt Helen, Cousin Bertha, Ned Scruggs (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Researching her family history after the death of her father, Scruggs came across the following entry in a 19th-century Mississippi county assets census: "1 pair waffle irons, 2 washing tubs, one waggon (sic) one carriage, eleven plows, one grinding hoe Also the Following Negroes, viz Lynda and her children": it was there that she discovered her grandfather. This moving, beautifully written memoir charts Scruggs's uncovering of her family history and her own, as well as the resolution of her conflicted feelings about her critical, domineering parents and her awakening into a new spiritual life more closely associated with African traditions. In the process of weaving these three strands, Scruggs tells stories about her kin, including how her 15-year-old uncle was shot and killed by a white store owner. She can be ironic describing how in her 1960s Nashville childhood (she could not understand why the water in the fountain marked "coloredwater" looked no different from what was dispensed in other fountains ) or can simply convey her pain and confusion after discovering that she cannot buy an Afro-comb when she is studying Russian at Middlebury College in Vermont. After training for an academic career in Slavic languages, Scruggs ended up a journalist, and her search into her past triggers a calling (in the form of dreams) to African spiritual practice. With an ear finely attuned to language and emotions, and an investigative reporter's sense of driven narrative, Scruggs has written a book that explores and clarifies both the personal and the political.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The sudden death of her father sent Scruggs on a genealogical search that culminated in a spiritual journey. Since her youth, she'd sought to keep her family at a distance, choosing colleges in the Midwest and the East over the Tennessee institutions long favored by her relatives. Careers in academia and journalism hadn't satisfied a personal longing that began with research of her family back to 1847 and led to a farm in a nearby county where her ancestors had been slaves. Talking to elderly and distant relatives, visiting archives, and piecing together her history, she put meat on the factual bones, imagining the life of Dick Scruggs, a slave ancestor who lived to see emancipation. The author later learns the long-buried family secret that Scruggs may not have been a direct relative, but she holds onto the sense of family she has discovered in the process. A columnist with the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Scruggs has written a sensitive and compelling recollection of a woman's search for her family roots and personal spirituality. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (February 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312261357
• ISBN-13: 978-0312261351
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,297,318 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars rings true, May 4, 2002

By	"oflannery" (Cleveland Heights, OH USA) - See all my reviews

The author's journey is told in a straight-forward style nurtured by her journalistic background, but her search for connection to a spiritual past adds a lyricism that makes reading a delight.
It rings true. Although my Irish-Catholic upbringing was very different, the author and I were born in the same year in the same part of the country, and some of her memories were familiar, as were parts of the journey itself.
Best of all, the author manages to avoid false nostalgia, and neither sentimentalizes nor sanitizes her "characters".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, May 1, 2002

By	Natalie Y. Moore (St. Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed Scruggs' book. She truly possesses the gift of language. "Claiming Kin" is more than a found-my-roots book. Her own story -- changing her name, journeying far from her Tennessean roots and embracing a spirituality that spoke to her soul -- is just as compelling as discovering one's enslaved forebears. She interweaves all of these aspects, which lead back to her relationship with her father. The result is a gift to unborn Scrugges, as well as readers.

5.0 out of 5 stars Finding out, memories and more than memories, July 25, 2005

By	Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I started reading this book as something I would look at a chapter at a time for few weeks, while I digested my lonely meals. However, the day I read it became the day I finished it. I couldn't put the book down, and amid the many tasks I had that Saturday, the one priority was to read this book. I didnt go out of the house all day, just got this book read.

What we have is an honest confrontation with family and family history. As someone who majored in writing memoir in Creative Writing School, I have come to find this genre usually divided between halcyon memories of a great childhood, a wonderful family, and a sacred past on one side, and the survival stories of folks who had tragic childhoods on the other hand. This book has none of that; it seems like the real thing right down the middle.

At the same time, the writer's ability to tell about herself, but keep the subject squarely on her family, and the larger spiritual quest that her search for her family put her own, was really interesting to me as somone who has attempted to write memoir.

What I learned in this book was about how family is an open and closed book but that book is about more than who did what when, but about history, not only the history in the books that tell us how slavery, reconstruction, desegregation etc. unfolded, but the history why one cousin smiles that way and another look that way, why one cousin I have who is in and out of jail walks and talks the same way that another cousin he has never met who is both a dean at a major university and a fanatical holiness believer.

If you are of my generation, 58 in 2005, you will settle in to some memories, although you will realize that you're somewhere between the author's parents and the author.

Besides all that, there is just some really good writing here. There are very tight metaphors that smack you into wondering why you didnt know what she is saying with them all your life. She is able to write quite sensitive, complex, and sophisticated things while being clear as a bell.

Best of all for memoir, this is a very accurate and honest book. Even if you don't share the spiritual beliefs that the experience leads the author to, you will find yourself never thinking about your family, and if you are African American, never thinking about our history the same way after you read this book.