In this unflinching, honest
narrative, an award-winning journalist discovers his family’s
heritage as slave owners in the South and grapples openly with his
whiteness to inspire others to do the same.
"Bracing,
candid, and rueful." —Kirkus
Baynard
Woods thought he had escaped the backwards ways of the South Carolina
he grew up in, a world defined by country music, NASCAR, and the
confederacy.
But
when a white guy from his hometown of Columbia, S.C.—also the
birthplace of secession— massacred nine Black people in Charleston
in the name of Southern whiteness, Woods began to delve into his
family’s history—and the ways that history has affected his own
life.
Upon
discovering that his family—both the Baynards and the
Woodses—collectively claimed ownership of more than 700 people in
1860 and that his great-grandfather had assassinated a Black
politician in 1871, Woods realized his own name was a confederate
monument. With assiduous research and brutal self-analysis, Woods
uncovers the details of his family’s crimes and all of the mundane
ways he inherited them…and their coverup. Along with his name, he
had inherited privilege, wealth, and all the lies that his ancestors
passed down through the generations.
At
a time where Southern states are embracing a return to authoritarian,
anti-democratic principles, Woods' analysis of how we inherited our
whiteness from the twisted psychology of Southern slavers is both
trenchant and urgent—but always cast against the foibles and
failures of his own life.
Unflinching
and uninhibited, Inheritance
is a no-holds-barred memoir that exposes the story from Trump country
that you haven’t heard while excavating what it means to reckon
with whiteness in America today and what it might mean to begin to
repair the past.