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85th out of 100 books
—
201 voters
American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama's family saga is a remarkable, quintessentially American story—a journey from slavery to the White House in five generations. Yet, until now, little has been reported on the First Lady's roots. Prodigiously researched, American Tapestry traces the complex and fascinating tale of Michelle Obama's ancestors, a history that the First Lady did not even know hers...more
Audio
Published
June 19th 2012
by Harper Audio
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I gave this book 100 pages (okay, 98) before calling it quits. The author incessantly insinuated herself into the book by suggesting motivations and drawing conclusions where it was completely unnecessary to do so. I’m baffled – the book jacket mentions that Swarns has been a reporter for the New York Times for over 15 years. It seems like she should be skilled at telling a story while sticking to the facts.
Local interest: Michelle Obama's great-great grandfather was biracial, the result of a white father and black slave mother. He settled in Birmingham, Alabama, and helped found two churches. His business in downtown Birmingham was one of the few that had both black and white customers.
The book is meant to be a history of the ancestors of Michelle Obama, black and white.
Such a good premise for a book and so poorly written and does not appear to have been edited at all.
The early pages promise us a history through geneology of the great-great-great-great grandparents of Michelle Robinson Obama through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement right down to the White House. Somehow it never arrives. Although the writer has found names of ancestors at each l...more
Such a good premise for a book and so poorly written and does not appear to have been edited at all.
The early pages promise us a history through geneology of the great-great-great-great grandparents of Michelle Robinson Obama through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement right down to the White House. Somehow it never arrives. Although the writer has found names of ancestors at each l...more
I'll start with the positive. I learned some new things about the Great Migration and the Civil War. The book included some other points of historical interest as well.
Unfortunately, these weren't enough to redeem the book from it's weaknesses. I picked it up on a whim from my library's recently inflated shelves of books that have anything to do with Romney or Obama. I thought, at first, that this might be a great way to scope out a possible Christmas present for some of my genealogically obses...more
Unfortunately, these weren't enough to redeem the book from it's weaknesses. I picked it up on a whim from my library's recently inflated shelves of books that have anything to do with Romney or Obama. I thought, at first, that this might be a great way to scope out a possible Christmas present for some of my genealogically obses...more
This was a disappointment. I know that this is popular history and that, even though I am a professional historian, I need to just cut the author some slack. But It was really, really hard to do so. First of all, Swarns needed an editor, or just a copyeditor. There are a bunch of silly errors and repeated phrases that started to irk me after a while. Second, Swarns comes to some totally unwarranted conclusions about how people "felt" or what they "believed." The evidence just doesn't exist to su...more
This book humanizes the otherwise often off-putting subject of Black History by bringing alife the life stories of the many otherwise ordinary people who were Michelle Obama's ancestors.
I loved the way the author used Mrs. Obama's celebrity and popularity to attract the attention of readers who might otherwise never read a book like this. (For example, Me.) And I was very glad that I had read it because I learned much about life in various different black communities through the past 150 years...more
I loved the way the author used Mrs. Obama's celebrity and popularity to attract the attention of readers who might otherwise never read a book like this. (For example, Me.) And I was very glad that I had read it because I learned much about life in various different black communities through the past 150 years...more
I wanted to like this book. I thought it would be a fascinating good read, full of history and human interest. I started reading, and then soon noticed that what was stressed over and over, was how this or that family member was pushed down by racism. That their history was lost because they had to migrate due to racism. I began to notice that hardly a page or paragraph went by without the mention of race or slavery. I started skipping through the pages, looking for something to settle on that w...more
Interesting book exploring Michelle Obama's multiracial ancestry. I am always intrigued by learning about how people lived and related to the color line at other times in American history, and how history shapes families - so this book was satisfying in that way. I also really enjoyed the parts exploring the range of reactions among both white and black descendents of Michelle Obama's ancestors - some were eager to learn the truth about whether they were related, while others did not want to kno...more
I gave this book four stars for the genealogy content not for how it was presented. The author did a great job pulling together current research on the ancestry of Michelle Obama as well as making her own contribution through interviews and DNA testing.
I would have enjoyed the book more if it would have placed more emphasis on facts instead of speculation on why certain events happened. Also, there was a lot of repetition in the book and sometimes it seemed like a series of articles instead of...more
I would have enjoyed the book more if it would have placed more emphasis on facts instead of speculation on why certain events happened. Also, there was a lot of repetition in the book and sometimes it seemed like a series of articles instead of...more
I just couldn't get into it. The genealogy was done by Megen Smolenyak, a well known genealogist, so I expected to enjoy the book. However the writing just didn't pull me into the story. It was written more like a dry history than a family story. The book was probably 2 or 3 times as long as it needed to be as it was filled in by information about other people who lived at the time and said things that might be similar to what the people in question might have felt.
In short, it was filled in wi...more
In short, it was filled in wi...more
The author uses the stories of Michelle Obama's ancestors to tell the story of the African-American experience in the South and Midwest over the past ~150 years. What I liked about this book was a) the impressive research the author did into Michelle Obama's roots, and b) how she uses that research to provide personal windows into significant epochs of American history. I learned a lot, and it personalized a lot of the hardships African-Americans have faced in a way that is hard to do in a forma...more
American Tapestry grew out of an article co-written by Rachel L. Swarms for the New York Times, in which First Lady Michelle Obama's family tree was researched. It was discovered that Ms. Obama had biracial heritage, and that a white woman named Joan Tribble, despite her family's misgivings, had a DNA test that confirmed that her ancestor, who owned Ms. Obama's great-great-great-grandmother, was the father of her child.
This slave's name was Melvinia, and she plays a major role in the book, which...more
This slave's name was Melvinia, and she plays a major role in the book, which...more
I listened to the audio version of American Tapestry and really enjoyed it. It explored Michelle Obama's genealogical history, which I found fascinating. Some reviewers have mentioned that it was hard to follow at times, but I didn't find that to be true at all. Perhaps it was because I was listening to the audio version. In any event, I found the book both interesting and inspirational. After discovering Family Finder through this book, I decided to have my own DNA tested. I'm hoping to find an...more
A fairly exhaustive genealogy of Michelle Obama's family, backed by some good research. There is sometimes a little too much "Oh, gee!" -- as in "Oh, gee! I didn't know that white slaveowners sometimes impregnated their slaves, did you?" "Oh, gee, I didn't know there were free black people before the Civil War, did you?" And, the constant jumping back and forth in chronology and between different parts of the family could become confusing. Since I read it on Kindle, it was hard to see the family...more
This book had so much potential to be great. We are talking about the ancestry of the delightful Michelle Obama, during a period of history that is utmost unique, layered, and fascinating. And while it was fun reading about all the different lives that lead up to Ms. Obama, and it is absolutely astonishing to really think how many people are actually involved in the roots leading to a single person, the author's writing in itself needed some serious re-editing.
The most interesting story of the b...more
The most interesting story of the b...more
I listened to the audiobook. I needed the genealogical table that is on the inside cover of the print copy in order to get a good picture of the four different family lines. The hook is, of course, the current first lady, but it could the story of any African American with roots in slavery. The author fills in with guesses because while the outline is clear and the historical challenges of the times are real, individual blacks had obstacles to documenting their lives. Ironically, bills and wills...more
The content of this book was fascinating and dealt with an important and often neglected subject, the genealogy of an African American Family, The writers information was well researched and well presented, and the first two thirds of the book was logically organized and very enlightening. The last portion of the book, contained some of the most intriguing information , but was rather difficult to follow, probably reflecting the difficulty involved with obtaining and confirming the information t...more
This is an interesting topic and so I wish that it had been made more accessible to the average reader. The history o Michelle Obama's black and white ancestors is one that must surely resonate with many people in this country, but the author's disconnected stories and the way she jumps around in time, plus the repetitiveness of the information, makes it hard to keep reading. The book should have been about 40% shorter and maybe had one chapter per character, giving us their whole story in one p...more
I'm interested in my own ancestry, which I can't find out much about so this book interested me a great deal. I enjoyed the way that the writer told the story. Since I've also recently become interested in reading about the American Civil War, this book gave me another aspect of it. I did get a bit confused with the people as the chapters moved along and it seemed that there was a bit of jumping around. All in all, I think that if you're interested in history, Civil War, black migration to the n...more
I enjoyed portions of this book, but overall I felt it was disappointing. I tend to love aything having to do with Michelle Obama, geneology, or historical fiction. But this was just poorly done. Some parts I found to be quite poignant, such as this passage on page 82:
"How does a marriage come undone? Sometimes it starts with a slow unraveling, with the fraying of the countless tiny threads that bind two people together. Or with wounds, as tiny as pinpricks, that fester instead of healing. There...more
"How does a marriage come undone? Sometimes it starts with a slow unraveling, with the fraying of the countless tiny threads that bind two people together. Or with wounds, as tiny as pinpricks, that fester instead of healing. There...more
I don't care for this new type of "imagined" history. (We can imagine what Melvinia was feeling, thinking, etc.). There is very little concrete evidence about the lives of most of Mrs. Obama's ancestor's in the historical record. This book attempts to help us understand what it would have been like for them by looking at the records that exist for others who lived in the same times and places. There was a lot of excellent and fascinating little-known history in this book. If the author had let t...more
Nov 12, 2012
Sherri
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone interested in the first African American first family
I loved the story, and the intricate details of just exactly how Michelle Obama came to be. It is a bright reminder that if our ancestry didn't exist the way it does, none of us would be here, or at least not be who we are. Though none of us chooses our relatives, they are our forebears, and made their own marks on the world that led to today; good, bad, or indifferent.
My only complaint is how the book is organized. I don't have a chance to read for long periods of time all at once, and sometime...more
My only complaint is how the book is organized. I don't have a chance to read for long periods of time all at once, and sometime...more
OH! what a book!! To know that a legacy that started due to an act between a white man and his slave woman could produce the FLOTUS!! talk about blown! not to say that this is the only and ultimate story but I can now understand how something that might be bad can turn into something very good.
Swarns is a very fine writer, and knows how to weave an interesting tale. The interconnected lives of Michelle Obama's ancestors are fascinating and inspiring. Parts of the book get bogged down in historical detail, but you can pick it up and tap in at any point in the story.
A wonderful book filled with history that so many white Americans are not familiar with. Books based on a person's genealogy are very difficult to write because the threads are often so hard to follow. This book truly captures how we are all connected, like it or not!
While I found this book interesting, I felt that since there was no collaboration with The First Lady or her immediate family... That it could be anyone's story. I didn't emotionally connect to the story so bleh.. It was ok.
Genealogical study of Michelle Obama's family. Fascinating and very detailed. The FIrst Lady did not know much of her family line until it was revealed by genealogists in 2009-2010. Amazing stories. Highly recommended.
I was so looking forward to reading this book. I just don't like Rachel Swarns' style. Her writing is repetitive and she intrudes in the narrative. I like to ask my own questions as I read. I respect her research.
A fantastic book that contains her genealogy within the context of american history, Yes I knew much of the history but the book makes it come alive in ways I would not have imagined. Exhaustive research.
Generally interesting, though filled with rampant speculation because of a lack of evidence about the ancestors. Not all that well written, which is strange because the author is a journalist.
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Oct 29, 2012 04:50pm