This is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Kea Miyaka-Natis.

A family tree tangled with abuse and trauma is the narrative foundation of today's book.

Go Back and Get It, a memoir of race, inheritance, and intergenerational healing.

Author Dion Ford's journey to reveal and understand the struggles of her

ancestors starts with a photo of her great-great-grandmother. In it, she's pictured with her

enslavers, including the man who went on to impregnate her several times, resulting in six

children. In the book, readers are taken on a journey to

understand this troubled pass in the context of Ford's own struggles with alcohol abuse

and sexual trauma. She chats here with NPR's Andrew Limbong about finding healing in her family

tree. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Dig deep enough into your family history and you're guaranteed to find uncomfortable questions

with unsatisfying answers, especially in the U.S., where the family tree for many black Americans

includes white slaveholders. But journalist Dion Ford dug in anyway. Her new memoir is titled,

Go Back and Get It, a memoir of race, inheritance, and intergenerational healing. It opens with

an old family photograph. Her great-great-grandmother, Tempe Burton, sitting on the

step of a porch flanked by her daughters. Sitting in the chairs above them is the white

couple who enslaved them, Elizabeth Stewart, and Colonel W.R. Stewart, Ford's great-great-grandfather.

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