This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Family Secrets is a production of IHeart Radio.

I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets,

the secrets that are kept from us,

the secrets we keep from others,, the secrets we keep from others,

and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

My guest today is Dorothy Roberts, professor, legal scholar, activist, recipient of a 2024 MacArthur Genius Grant, and author of the upcoming book, The Mixed Marriage Project,

A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family.

Dorothy's is a story in a way about the stories we tell ourselves about that most foundational

element of our lives, our own family,

and the ways those stories can radically change over time.

It's also the story of a remarkable daughter

who is able to illuminate and finish what her father never could,

and in so doing, learn more about herself

as she deepens what is already an extraordinary life's work.

I was born in Chicago, but when I was only three months old, my parents moved to Liberia.

My mother, she was from Jamaica, but in her 20s, she moved to Liberia and then came to Chicago to attend Roosevelt University where my father was teaching and that's where they met.

And my father was an anthropologist, so they decided to spend a couple years in Liberia where he would teach.

And that was a place she was familiar with having lived there before meeting him.

And so at three months old, my parents and I moved to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

This is in the 1950s.

...