"As you might imagine, over the years, many people heard stories about my family. And they said, Hey, why don't you write a memoir? I really wasn't very interested in writing a memoir as I perceived a memoir to be, so the idea of spending years working on a book about the issues in my immediate family, which I grew up with, and was intimately familiar with, it felt like I would be locked in a closet with that somehow. And then I became sort of interested in looking backward..." Maud Newton used to believe her research into her family's genealogy was just a distraction from the novel she'd been working on. Not so. Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation is just out, and Maud joins us on the show to talk about where her curiosity took her, DNA sleuthing, facing her family's legacies (genetic + historical + behavioral), epigenetics, what Harry Crews taught her about writing, and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer.

Featured book: Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton

And a few of the books that Maud mentions in hers:

Where I Was From by Joan Didion

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

The Mistress's Daughter by AM Homes

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love by Dani Shapiro

Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Poured Over is produced and hosted Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays.)