Best Of: A family split by race / Eddie Glaude Jr. on America at 250
6/20/202648 min
Pope Leo XIV’s Creole family roots inspired New Orleanian journalist Susan Saulny to research her Creole great-uncle who moved to Chicago, identified himself as white and never returned. She describes her journey to reunite her family. Her piece in the New York Times is called "A Family Secret No More."
As the United States turns 250, scholar Eddie Glaude Jr. has blunt advice: “America has to grow up.” In ‘America, U.S.A.,’ the Princeton African American Studies professor looks at the country through the lens of its previous anniversaries and centennials. "The divided soul of the nation is in full view," he says.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan shares three book recommendations: ‘The Family Man,’ by James Lasdun, ‘The Hill,’ by Harriet Clark and ‘A Beautiful Loan,’ by Mary Costello.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
[upbeat music] 48 teams We want to be one of the soccer powerhouses that people talk about. 16 cities The joy of the World Cup is that it holds up a mirror to the society that surrounds it. One beautiful game.
Susan Saulny· Guest0:11
I think everyone knows that nothing is like a, a World Cup game.
Speaker 10:15
The World Cup is here, and we have you covered. Follow along on and off the pitch with the NPR app.
Tonya Mosley· Host0:21
[gentle music] From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley in Los Angeles. This Juneteenth weekend, two conversations about race in America and how the country remembers it. Journalist Susan Saulny grew up in a Black family in New Orleans, knowing one piece of family lore. A great uncle had boarded a train to Chicago a century earlier and started his life as a white man. In a piece for The New York Times, she traces what became of him and the secret that split her family in two. Then scholar Eddie Glaude Jr., ahead of America's 250th, he looks back at the country's other big birthdays and what they reveal. Every anniversary, the nation throws itself a party and quietly edits out the parts of the story it cannot bear to face. And book critic Maureen Corrigan has a few spring releases worth adding to your summer reading list. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
Speaker 51:21
This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery, sometimes about really big things, but most times,