Título: Skinfolk: A Memoir
Autor: Matthew Pratt Guterl
Sinopse: A haunting, poignant story of growing up in a mixed-race family in 1970s New Jersey, in the tradition of The Color of Water.
Race is made, not born. It can materialize with a thunderous suddenness. It can happen to you in moments that will be cauterized into memory as if into flesh. Could a picturesque white house with a picket fence save the world? What if it was filled with children drawn together from around the globe? And what if, within the yard, the lines of kin and skin, of family and race, were deliberately knotted and twisted? In 1970, a wild-eyed dreamer, Bob Guterl, believed it could.
Bob was determined to solve, in one stroke, the problems of overpopulation and racism. The charming, larger-than-life lawyer and his brilliant wife, Sheryl, a former homecoming queen, launched a radical experiment to raise their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called war zones of the American century. They moved to rural New Jersey with dreams of creating what Bob described as a new Noah’s ark, filled with “two of every race.”
While the venture made for a great photograph, with the proverbial “casseroles and potato chips out for everyone,” the Brady Brunch façade began to crack once reality seeped into the yard, adding undue complexity to the ordinary drama of a big family. Neighbors began to stare. Vacations went wrong. Joy and laughter commingled with discomfort and alienation. Familial bonds inevitably buckled. In the end, this picture-perfect family was no longer, and memories of the idyllic undertaking were marred by tragedy.
In lyrical yet wrenching prose, Matthew Pratt Guterl, one of the children, narrates a family saga of astonishing originality, in which even the best intentions would prove woefully inadequate. He takes us inside the clapboard house where Bob and Sheryl raised their makeshift brood in a nation riven then as now by virulent racism and xenophobia. Chronicling both the humor and pathos of this experiment, he “opens a door to our dreams of what the idea of family might make possible.”
In the tradition of James McBride’s The Color of Water, Skinfolk exposes the joys and constraints of love, blood, and belonging, and the persistent river of racial violence in America, past and present. 25 black-and-white illustrations
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “Skinfolk: A Memoir”, de Matthew Pratt Guterl, publicado pela editora Liveright, em 2023 e com 320 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Liveright
Páginas: 320
Ano: 2023-03-28
Edição:
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 1324091711
ISBN13: 9781324091714
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Liveright costumam oferecer experiências de leitura densas, que transitam entre narrativas históricas profundas e ficções com ambientações ricas e atmosféricas. O catálogo apresenta obras que exploram desde realidades sociais contemporâneas até reconstruções detalhadas de épocas passadas, com uma linguagem que pode variar entre o lírico e o direto, mas sempre com atenção à complexidade dos personagens e contextos. Há uma frequência em temas como transformações culturais, crises pessoais e coletivas, e o impacto da história na vida individual. O ritmo das obras pode oscilar entre o contemplativo e o intenso, com vozes narrativas que ora se aprofundam em reflexões, ora se lançam em tramas de tensão e conflito.
