Benjamin Banneker and Us, Rachel Jamison Webster
Benjamin Banneker and Us, Rachel Jamison Webster
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Benjamin Banneker and Us
Eleven Generations of an American Family

Author: Rachel Jamison Webster

Narrator: Rachel Jamison Webster

Unabridged: 12 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/21/2023

Synopsis

A family reunion gives way to an unforgettable genealogical quest as relatives reconnect across lines of color, culture, and time, putting the past into urgent conversation with the present.In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative.Acting as a storyteller, Webster draws on oral history and conversations with her DNA cousins to imagine the lives of their shared ancestors across eleven generations, among them Banneker’s grandparents, an interracial couple who broke the law to marry when America was still a conglomerate of colonies under British rule. These stories shed light on the legal construction of race and display the brilliance and resistance of early African Americans in the face of increasingly unjust laws, some of which are still in effect in the present day.

About Rachel Jamison Webster

Rachel Webster writes essays, poems, and stories that have been published in outlets including Poetry, Tin House, and the Yale Review. She is the author of four books of poetry and cross-genre writing. Benjamin Banneker and Us is her first nonfiction book. She is a professor of creative writing at Northwestern University and has taught writing workshops through the National Urban League, Chicago Public Schools, Gallery 37, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art, working to bring diversity and antiracist awareness into creative writing curricula.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Brent

This book is written by one of almanac maker Benjamin Banneker's distant relatives. Part of the book is a presentation of the history of the author's ancestors, while another part covers the author's journey to discover more about that history. There is a third part, where the author creates a sort......more

Goodreads review by Carly

Complicated feelings about this, would give it a 3.5 (i think) if i could. I want to push back on some of the critique about this being multi genre and experimental. I think it makes sense given the dialogue within the book of different methods of constructing the past and remembering history. At the......more

Goodreads review by Bob

I had thought that reading Benjamin Banneker and US would simply deepen my acquaintance with Benjamin. But over the decades since Alice Walker’s Color Purple awakened me to the rampant sexual invasion of enslaved Black women by their white enslavers, I’ve felt the painful hush shrouding the intersec......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth

Usually when I write a book review I am primarily focused on HOW the story was written. But this book ended up generating just as much thought about exactly WHO was and should be writing this kind of story. The more I read, the more the author brought this question to the forefront (sometimes intent......more

Quotes

“Extremely moving.” Washington Post

“Excellent and thought-provoking.” New York Times

“[Shines] a light onto not just a neglected piece of personal and national history but also the hypocrisy inherent in so many discussions around race.” Los Angeles Times

“A clarifying lens on America’s ongoing struggles against racism and endemic injustice." Booklist (starred review)

“[An] extraordinary work of creative nonfiction…containing enthralling imaginings, based on historical facts where possible, of how Banneker and his relatives survived centuries of appalling racism…Eloquently written and movingly narrated.” Library Journal (starred audio review)

“Listeners who relish the immediacy of an author’s voice will embrace this story of generational memory and discovery.” AudioFile

“A stunning meditation on race, identity, and achievement…[A] celebration of America’s multiracial past and present.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Webster has collaborated with her relatives to weave an impressive investigation of race and our shared American history―the convergences and divergences across time and space.” Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize winner and former US poet laureate

“I am inspired by this family’s resilience, and by the way their lives illuminate the past and our present.” Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of The Three Mothers

“[A] work of imagination, research, and listening and is written in the spirit of healing.” Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands

Awards

  • New York Times Book Review pick
  • New Yorker Best Books of the Year
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