The Mixed Marriage Project

“Searing… What a gift that [Roberts] has completed [her father’s] work, in her own way, here.” —Julia Scheeres, The New York Times “An enthralling mash-up of memoir and sociological treatise. … Not a traditional memoir. … An ambitious enterprise: enthralling in its detail, matter-of-fact in its storytelling.” —Julia M. Klein, The Pennsylvania Gazette “A compelling exploration of the meanings of race, love, family and the ethics of observation.” —The Colorado Sun “Roberts shares insight about the history of interracial relationships in the United States and brings to light her father’s research in this highly recommended memoir.” —Library Journal (starred review) “A tender, thoughtful, unsentimental chronicle of the author’s beloved family and America’s messy racial history.” —Jenny Hamilton, Booklist “A rich and riveting blend of memoir and research that tackles issues ranging from redlining to intersectional racism and sexism to personal musings about discovering Roberts’ mother’s scholarly voice and her father’s commitment to building community. An insightful and fundamentally joyful narrative about uncovering a family’s hidden past.” —Kirkus [starred review]“Few books manage to rewrite both a family’s history and a nation’s moral record, yet The Mixed Marriage Project miraculously does both. Dorothy Roberts transforms personal excavation into social revelation, unearthing how love, race, and law have intertwined across generations. With the precision of a scholar and the passion of a truth-teller, she restores voices long silenced and shows how the intimate and the political are never apart. This memoir is an astonishing act of remembrance and repair.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow “A compelling, beautiful and fascinating exploration of race, identity and love. Dorothy Roberts has an important story to tell at a time when our nation needs to think more honestly about the legacy of racial inequality.” —Bryan Stevenson, bestselling author of Just Mercy “In The Mixed Marriage Project, Dorothy Roberts, the most important contemporary scholar of race, gender and the law, turns her remarkable intellect and mighty pen to her most intimate subject to date: her sociologist father’s many decades of research on interracial marriage as well as her parents’ interracial union and her own coming of age. This book is tender, probing, and beautiful: filled with vivid characters and deep insight about twentieth century America in its midwest metropolis. An important addition to the canon of Chicago literature represented by figures like Carl Sandburg, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Wright, The Mixed Marriage Project is a brilliant and wholly unique yet widely illuminating book. “ —Imani Perry, author of South to America “Dorothy Roberts is a bold scholar, always challenging the systems and structures of racial injustice. Here she is a daughter too, who explores her mixed-race lineage through the lives and scholarship of her parents. This tender, rigorous memoir shows how valiantly they worked to dismantle centuries of prejudice against mixed marriage and to create their own loving family.” —Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland

Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. The author of five books, including Killing the Black Body, a MacArthur Fellow, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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