When poet and inventive author Rachel Jamison Webster attended a cousin’s marriage ceremony, she was stunned to find that her household is expounded to famed mathematician and naturalist Benjamin Banneker.

This information was surprising, not solely due to Banneker’s place in historical past as the primary Black particular person within the U.S. to publish an almanac and for his position in surveying the boundaries for the District of Columbia — but in addition as a result of the writer is white. Thus started an exploration into household, race, and historical past that might culminate in a memoir-cum-biographical-sketch, Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family.

In the Author’s Note, Webster determines it might be “impossible… to tell a story of Black genius and resistance without questioning [her] own position as a white woman and studying the origins and ramifications of whiteness itself.” Conveniently, 4 of her newfound Black cousins, Edith Lee Harris, Robert Lett, Gwen Marable, and Edwin Lee, play important and collaborative roles in serving to her hint the story of their shared ancestry, finally giving the ebook its “proper form as a conversation between the present and the past.” Webster fittingly shares a byline with these cousins, whose oral histories return generations and inform a lot of what she writes in regards to the household. They hint their line again to 1683, when an Irish indentured servant named Molly arrived in what would turn out to be America and, after finishing her time period of servitude, “was said to purchase two male slaves from Africa. She married and had children with one of them.” According to Banneker-Lett household custom, the person she married was named Bana’ka and their eldest daughter Mary turned Benjamin Banneker’s mom.

The conversations between Webster and her cousins are among the many extra compelling components of the ebook, offering a platform for the cousins to share the implications of their ancestry as Black individuals. As Edwin Lee notes, theirs “is a mixed family, but it is also an African American family that goes back to before the founding of the country. There aren’t hardly any African American families that can do this kind of documentary verification.” The talks often broaden past their shared family tree, nevertheless, they usually embrace every little thing from Black individuals deciding to “pass” as white to what’s taking place in nationwide politics.

Aside from these moments between cousins, the ebook at its greatest when Webster interrogates what it means to be white. She is unflinchingly self-reflective after studying of her Black ancestry, and she or he realizes how occasionally tales about race have been advised in her household. Having been born white, she acknowledges that she is a member of a gaggle “who did not realize that our category of whiteness was a historical invention that had been weaponized to remove people of color from the guiding myth of America, and from its ongoing safeties and privileges.”

Webster additionally notes that the historic report on this nation accommodates comparatively little in regards to the Black expertise earlier than Emancipation. Enslaved individuals have been forbidden to learn or write, and most Black individuals did not seem in censuses by identify earlier than 1870. As such, she explains within the Author’s Note, “I allowed myself to imagine their thoughts and feelings, because I wanted them to live on the page as more than just names and dates.”

While this may absolutely work for some readers, I discovered it difficult. For instance, among the many highlights of Banneker’s life is an eloquent letter he writes to Thomas Jefferson, assailing the person “on his hypocrisy as an enslaver who wrote about freedom.” Webster imagines the creation of the letter, writing that Banneker “had felt that he was not merely himself, but his people — a channel connecting to his father and his father before him, and even to those ‘brethren’ to come.” It’s a lovely sentiment, lyrically expressed, however it’s nonetheless a bit off-putting for me. Similarly, when Webster imagines Molly throughout her indenture attempting to present a present of assist to Adaora, an imagined enslaved Black girl, it appears like an effort to affirm Molly’s goodness. We know that the household’s oral historical past suggests Molly taught Banneker how you can learn, however when Webster maintains that Molly “raised four girls to honor the African traditions of her husband,” it is unclear whether or not that comes from household custom, documented historical past, or Webster’s creativeness. These uncertainties meant the invented ideas of the characters ended up being extra distracting than illuminating for me.

Further complicating the story, historians are cut up on whether or not Banneker had a white grandmother in any respect. The household additionally encounters analysis suggesting that Molly might have merely been a slaveholder, reasonably than somebody who noticed the particular person she bought “as a man and not property.” Banneker-Lett household historical past suggests a loving relationship, and I hope that was the case. However, references from the period and present-day analysis, like They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, counsel “white women were some of the most vindictive and violent enslavers of all.”

In the top, I discovered Benjamin Banneker and Us extra satisfying as a memoir than as a biographical sketch. I’m open to Webster’s declaration that their “ancestor Molly was one of the good white women.” But I’m not satisfied of it, which is definitely influenced by my being a Black descendant of slaves. That solely is sensible. As Webster says, “Of course, we cannot know the details of Molly and Bana’ka’s relationship, but we can learn something about ourselves in the way we imagine it.” This ebook, and our responses to it, serves as a reminder of the extent to which “history — even well-researched history — is subjective and alive. It’s always being seen through the lens of the present.”

Ericka Taylor is the favored schooling supervisor for Take on Wall Street and a contract author. Her work has appeared in Bloom, The Millions, Willow Springs and Yes! Magazine.