Book Review: Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree

Is it Worth Reading?
Book Review by Janet Crain

(Republished from the Fall, 2008 MHS Newsletter)

Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree
The Search for My Melungeon Ancestors

by Lisa Alther
Arcade Publishing (April 11, 2007)

Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree - The Search for My Melungeon Ancestors is an interesting narrative of a middle aged woman's search for identity, recounted in a wry, offhand manner with some occasional digressions into the history of the Appalachian region. At times, the digressions involve the author's personal opinions about lifestyle choices and controversial subjects and don't really add to the narrative. If the stated purpose of this book is the search for her Melungeon ancestors, the stories about college, New York and Paris and monsters in Lake Champion don't seem necessary to recount and explain this journey.

In fact, this book could have stood alone as a rather entertaining account of the genealogy research experiences of a person trying to find her roots. Throwing in information (and misinformation) about the historical Melungeon people of East Tennessee and nearby regions was asking too much and was not delivered.

Much of this can be explained by the author's reliance on the popular "Internet" version of the Melungeons which came into being concurrently with a pop culture book by Brent Kennedy. The book, The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People : An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America, while probably an honest endeavor, was responsible for thousands upon thousands of readers becoming convinced that they were of Melungeon descent. After all, didn't they have ancestors from the region with one or more of the surnames purported to be Melungeon? This ever expanding list grew to well over one hundred surnames.

And now Kinfolks is being used as a textbook. I expect there will be many more "Melungeons" finding their identity. And I wonder how far into the future the ripple effect from this misrepresentation will extend. The Melungeon people were a small group that lived in a specific region of America. They were subjected to prejudice and hardships and endured many difficulties. They deserve to have their true story told. But, regrettably, this is not a book that does so.