Whiteness is Not an Ancestor: Essays on Life and Lineage by white Women

by Lisa B. Iversen (Editor), Sonya Lea, Karin Konstantynowicz

While leading a retreat entitled "Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor: An Embodied Dialogue with the Internalized Colonizer," Lisa Iversen, a family constellations facilitator and therapist for over two decades, was visited by a dream inspiring this project: a collection of essays written by white women cultivating consciousness regarding the role of whiteness in collective movements of immigration, colonialism, slavery, and war. This book is the result: twelve essays by women from three countries disentangling themes of innocence, historic trauma, grief, perpetrator/victim bonds, race, privilege, gender, guilt, money, boundaries, and belonging in their families and ancestries.

Essays by Sonya Lea, Karin Konstantynowicz, Anne Hayden, Summer Starr, Kate Regan, June BlueSpruce, Sabine Olsen, Carole Harmon, Christina Greené, Sharon Halfnight, Una Suseli O’Connell, and Pam Emerson.

Edited and Foreword by Lisa Iversen.

Genres: Nonfiction

156 pages, ebook

Published October 13, 2020

About the author

Lisa received her Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington in 1992. Her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and English, with a minor in Women’s Studies, is from the University of Minnesota (1986). She has been a practicing psychotherapist in the Pacific Northwest since 1993 and facilitating Systemic and Family Constellations since 1999. From 2008-2015 she co-hosted the radio show, “Life Conversations presents Ancestral Blueprints” with Atlanta-based host Adé Anifowose and Ombassa Sophera. While actively connected to her Minnesota roots, Lisa now creates home with her husband and their daughter in the Pacific Northwest where she directs the Center for Ancestral Blueprints.

Reviews

[Anna Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The personal and philosophical stories/essays in Whiteness Is Not an Ancestor provide unique, often haunting perspectives from twelve women seeking to understand how their privilege has been influenced by historic connections to ancestors who participated in systematic racism. This book is an insightful and inciting addition to the conversation currently front and center.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to receive a pre-publication edition of this book. This is an extraordinary collection of essays by white women, of varied backgrounds, who are grappling with what it means to be white in their individual contexts. These 12 personal essays represent brave explorations of the women's relationships to whiteness via different aspects of their histories and heritages. The essays provide a fascinating look at whiteness through the lenses of American racism and Jewish Americans; the Swiss and Nazi collaborations; displacement by war; relationship to unceded tribal Native lands; and German ethnicity and reparations. Some of the essays are deeply introspective while others are personal in a more contextural fashion.

This book is a good reminder for Americans that whiteness may be expressed differently depending on the country and culture, but has always been associated with privilege and oppression. I think that this can be an important addition to the cannon on whiteness.

[Judith Laxer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of essays by white women examining their family histories and the generational wounding that has led to current racism is a timely read. A prism of experiences in different voices and writing styles from several cultures and countries, this book demonstrates how to look into our past to shift the present. What I particularly liked was how the family constellation work informed the depth of these stories, how the authors speak difficult truths with courage and humility, and how their reckoning has awakened healing that helps dismantle racism.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have received this title via NetGalley and publishers in exchange for an honest review
I really enjoyed this collection. I liked all the the essays took a different approach on the topic of whiteness and ancestry. All these authors provided different outlooks and came from different backgrounds. Some were from the US, Canada, Switzerland, even Russia. They all had different religious backgrounds. There were a few essays that I felt invalidated people of different backgrounds from the author. I hope I just read too deep into those parts, but I came out of reading those essays with an icky feeling.

[Erikka · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt like a sales pitch for the editor's workshop group. I read four of the essays before I was like "wait, they all mention Constellations (the group)." Also, it leaves a bad and rather Karen-y taste when you're writing an essay about how white women need to do the work for anti-racism and then you spell Ahmaud Arbery's name wrong in the first essay. Like...Google that sh*t. I quit after 4 essays...hoping I still get the free steak dinner after this timeshare spiel...

[Rachel Parsons · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few gems in here

[Cathy Sommer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and shaking - totally hooked by these essays. Opening doors and connection to my own inheritance, family history and relationship to collective trauma.