The Amnesia of Whiteness

Hilary Giovale was 40 years old when she opened a genealogy book at her parents' house and found the names of people her family had enslaved, with dollar amounts next to their names. She had hardly slept when she sat down for breakfast the next morning. Her parents shrugged. She called it the amnesia of whiteness.

That night was the beginning of eight years of writing, reparations work, and reclaiming a European heritage she never knew she had. Hilary gives every dollar her book makes to two reparations organizations. She works with an ancestor altar almost every day. And she has been learning Gaelic songs and Celtic ceremonies as a way of finding out who her people were before colonization swept through.

This episode is about what it looks like to face the hardest parts of your family story and turn it into something good.