by Annie Scholl

Renowned author, scholar and legal academic, Dorothy Roberts has spent more than three decades writing about race, gender and class, exposing what she calls “under-recognized mechanisms of social injustice.”

“I’ve explored a number of seemingly distinct topics, but they all relate to each other,” said Roberts, a professor of law, sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the Penn Program on Race, Science and Society. Her first book, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, published in 1997, examined the devaluation of Black women’s childbearing. Three more books followed, exploring racism in the child welfare system, the resurgence of biological ideas about race, and the abolition of family policing. Roberts said she tries “to write compelling books on big topics that will move people to change their views.”

Her latest book, The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family, published this past February, grew out of a different kind of discovery: boxes of her late father’s papers. Inside were transcripts from interviews he had conducted with couples for a book on interracial marriage he never wrote. Later, Roberts’ mother joined the project, interviewing the wives while her father interviewed the husbands.

The first transcript Roberts pulled from the box was dated February 19, 1937 — more than a decade before her father had met her mother. “I literally could not move,” Roberts said. “It was overwhelming because it changed how I viewed my father and his research and its relationship to my parents’ marriage and our family.”

Until then, Roberts had thought her white father’s research on interracial marriage grew out of his love for her mother, who was Black. The transcript showed that his interest in Black life, interracial relationships, and racism had begun much earlier. At first, she wondered if he married her mother as part of his mixed marriage project.

When she was growing up, Roberts sometimes felt that her father treated her and her sisters as if they were “living proof of his argument against the prevailing belief that children of interracial couples were destined to have social and psychological problems.” But writing her memoir only deepened her understanding of her father’s love for her family and lasting influence on her. “I came to appreciate that I was woven into every part of his life.”

Recently, Roberts talked with The Sunlight Press about writing across genres, making complex ideas accessible, and finding a form for a deeply personal story rooted in family history.

What was writing this memoir like compared to writing your other books?

With my other books, when I was ready to write, I had a very firm position. The book was an argument in support of a call for a particular type of social justice. The memoir was different. Even after I decided I wanted to write a memoir, I didn’t know where it was going because I was still reading the interviews, reflecting on the stories, and figuring out how I was going to piece it all together. There were things I was discovering as I was writing. The memoir entailed much more self-discovery than writing my four prior books.

Your writing is very accessible. Is that intentional?

That’s what I’ve always tried to do. It’s a mission of mine to be accessible to a broad readership. I’ve been told since I was in high school that I’m skilled at making my writing clear and understandable. I was also encouraged to do that as a lawyer. When I was an associate in the litigation department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, under the supervision of some of the best litigators in the country, they impressed upon me and the other associates that we should write very clearly because we want the judge to understand and be compelled by what we submit. I’ve always had an aversion to complicated and jargony writing. That’s not an aversion to a literary style like artistic prose, but I don’t think I have that skill or inclination.

Could you have ever imagined that you would write memoir?

No. I like memoirs, but when I read them, I often think, how did the author remember all that? How did they write so much about when they were four years old? How did they write so much about a particular incident, let alone remember it? I didn’t think I could ever do that.

This memoir came about because I wanted to share the stories of the couples my father, and later my parents together, interviewed. As I’m reading the interviews, I’m having reactions to the couples’ stories. It generates all these memories of my childhood and my parents. I felt compelled to write a memoir at that point. I felt that I had a duty to write not only the couples’ stories but also my parents’ and my own.

Dorothy Roberts

Your parents have both passed, but you have twin sisters. Did they have any hesitation about you writing this book?

When I finished a chapter, I’d send it to my sisters. For the most part, they were very excited because we love to reminisce about our childhood. This was an opportunity for us to jog our memory of aspects of our childhood one of us may have forgotten and the others remembered. It was also an opportunity to learn more about our parents. They weren’t aware of what I discovered either.

But they had some hesitation. In fact, one of my sisters opposed my revealing certain aspects of my father’s life.

What was your sister opposed to?

I have a chapter called “The Bachelor,” where I write about my father’s life when he got back from the Army in the 1950s, before he met my mother. It includes my father’s visits to a nudist camp and a wild party attended by mixed couples only. When I sent it to my sisters, one of them said, “No, you can’t put that in the book. Mommy would be mortified. What will people think of our family?”

We had several conversations about it. I explained that both of our parents are dead and Daddy wrote all this in his interview notes and left them in his papers. If he wanted them hidden, why would he even write about it as part of his research? Why would he even put it in his notes? I toned down some of the language and some of the descriptions that my father put in his notes, but I kept the experiences in my memoir.

Eventually, my other sister said, “Well, you can try to hide the truth, but it’s the truth.” And then the sister who had the strong opposition said, “All right.” She still thought I shouldn’t include it, but she gave me permission, which I was grateful for.

What advice would you have for memoir writers fearing their family’s reaction?

One thing I decided to do was to let my sisters read it in advance and then face the consequences. I didn’t feel I could hide the chapter or anything else from them. Partly, I wanted to get their help in remembering details about our childhood, but part of it also was I didn’t want to blindside them. I thought that would be cruel and dishonest.

I would advise sharing potentially difficult aspects in advance. I think it’s worse to hide it, and then when family members read the book, they’re mad both that you hid it and that you wrote it. At least if you share it, they’re only mad about one thing.

What was the greatest challenge of doing this book?

I would say the challenge of figuring out how to weave it together coherently and legibly competes with the challenge of laying out my very personal experiences and thoughts for the public to read. Those were the two biggest challenges of writing this memoir.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I had to play around with ways of weaving together the different parts of the book—the interviews and stories of interracial couples, my parents’ relationship, my reaction to the stories, my self-exploration about my own identity and my memories of my childhood. I would encourage people writing memoirs to be open to trying out different forms of their memoir, different ways of piecing together the various parts.

Image: “Vintage Typewriter” by Memphis CVB via Flickr