Belonging to Blackness

With the public’s use of popular biogeographic ancestry technologies offered by direct-to-consumer companies such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and African Ancestry, it is now possible for novice and expert family genealogists to reveal hidden branches of family trees and help individuals answer the existential question “Who am I?” Inspired by her own experience with using ancestry technologies, Yndia Lorick-Wilmot chronicles the journeys of forty African descendants located across the diaspora toward understanding their own genealogies.

She assembles a chorus of diverse African-descendant voices, along with reflections from expert scholars across disciplines, to explore the significance of Black identity, resilience, triumph, and love that are passed down in family lore, preserved in DNA, and reconstructed in life stories of today. In doing so, she offers a revelatory perspective on what it means, in the current day, to be Black and embody “Blackness” locally and globally.