01/13/2020

Essayist and retired pediatrician Kearse traces her family’s history from the antebellum South to present-day California and Boston and investigates long-standing claims that she and her relatives are descended from U.S. president James Madison in this evocative and probing debut. According to family legend, Kearse is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of the founding father and an enslaved woman named Coreen. Writing in the African tradition of the griot (oral historians and storytellers who serve “as human links between past and present”), Kearse begins her inquiry with a box of heirlooms including “a smudged copy of an 1860 slave census” listing her great-great grandparents and their 10 children. She pays a visit to Madison’s Montpelier estate in Virginia, where archaeologists are in the midst of excavating the kitchen where Coreen once cooked; travels to slave trading centers in Lagos, Portugal, and Ghana; imagines the wrenching ordeals of her first ancestor to be brought from West Africa to America; and relates her mother’s experiences growing up in Jim Crow–era Texas. Though Kearse’s attempts to establish a genetic link to the president—who had no “acknowledged offspring”—are met with “roadblocks,” she succeeds in portraying her family’s tenacious rise in social standing across eight generations. This moving account asks essential questions about how American history gets told. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, Inkwell Management (Mar.)

"A Roots for a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history."  — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Astonishing... In extraordinary times, as statues fall, Bettye Kearse has written an extraordinary book. It contains lessons for all Americans... Powerful...Seeking to validate and enlarge the black Madisons’ saga, to tell a nuanced story until now completely unknown, [Kearse] succeeds richly...Leaving her much-celebrated white ancestors in the background, she restores the black Madisons to history. They are resilient Americans, second to none."  — Michael Henry Adams, The Guardian 

"[An] evocative and probing debut...[Kearse] succeeds in portraying her family’s tenacious rise in social standing across eight generations. This moving account asks essential questions about how American history gets told."  — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"'You come from African slaves and a president,' Bettye Kearse's mother told her. According to oral history, she was the great-great-great-granddaughter of James Madison and Coreen, an enslaved woman; they were half-siblings. Armed with her family's archives, Kearse visited Montpelier, where Madison lived in a mansion and Coreen was likely born and raised in nearby slave quarters, and travels across the world and back again, through the Jim Crow South up to present-day California, in search of eight generations of Black Madisons. We think." — Alexis Coe, for Good Morning America, "7 Books to Read for Presidents Day" 

"A compelling saga that gives a voice to those that history tried to erase...Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read."  — Booklist (starred review)

"A richly detailed, nuanced, and poignant story—part memoir and part social history—that places the dual legacy of slavery and sexual violence at the center of America's founding."  — The Progressive

"A compelling saga... Kearse, a very worthy storyteller carries the reader along as she deliberately and forcefully expounds on a narrative, abundant in its details — even though basically oral... In a way, Kearse’s quest to fill out portions of her story resembles the quest of two generations ago by author Alex Haley in his journey to find Roots: A Saga of an American Family... In all, Kearse spent 'more than 20 years traveling, researching and writing' about her ancestors. Get this book and relive her journey.”  — Daily Press 

“The Other Madisons marks the culmination of Kearse’s 30-year investigation into not only her own family history, but that of other enslaved and free African Americans whose voices have been silenced over the centuries."  — Smithsonian

"A beautiful, sometimes wrenching, meditation on the brutality at the center of American history and the gnarled, complex power dynamics it has spawned in every facet of American life, from the halls of power to individual households." — Nina Renata Aron, California Magazine

"Kearse's enlightening book, The Other Madisons, has not only been a labor of love for the author for 30 years but, more deeply, her life's purpose...Kearse's experiences with racism and those of her ancestors are deftly and sympathetically braided throughout the pages. Most notable is Mandy, who eloquently speaks to the reader through the author's imagination. Kearse came to understand that her ancestors must have possessed incredible inner strength and hope."  — Albuquerque Journal 

"The Other Madisons, as a thorough history of one family, may offer answers for other descendants of enslaved people as well. It is part personal quest, as Kearse works to understand and reconcile her own origins, and a carefully researched and documented correction to the American historical record."  — Shelf Awareness

"Though Kearse’s attempts to establish a genetic link to the president — who had no 'acknowledged offspring' — are met with 'roadblocks,' she succeeds in portraying her family’s tenacious rise in social standing across eight generations. This moving account asks essential questions about how American history gets told."  — New York State Writers Institute (University at Albany, State University of New York) 

"'You come from African slaves and a president,' Bettye Kearse's mother told her. According to oral history, she was the great-great-great-granddaughter of James Madison and Coreen, an enslaved woman; they were half-siblings. Armed with her family's archives, Kearse visited Montpelier, where Madison lived in a mansion and Coreen was likely born and raised in nearby slave quarters, and travels across the world and back again, through the Jim Crow South up to present-day California, in search of eight generations of Black Madisons. We think."

"A richly detailed, nuanced, and poignant story—part memoir and part social history—that places the dual legacy of slavery and sexual violence at the center of America's founding." 

The Other Madisons marks the culmination of Kearse’s 30-year investigation into not only her own family history, but that of other enslaved and free African Americans whose voices have been silenced over the centuries." 

"Astonishing... In extraordinary times, as statues fall, Bettye Kearse has written an extraordinary book. It contains lessons for all Americans... Powerful...Seeking to validate and enlarge the black Madisons’ saga, to tell a nuanced story until now completely unknown, [Kearse] succeeds richly...Leaving her much-celebrated white ancestors in the background, she restores the black Madisons to history. They are resilient Americans, second to none." 

"Kearse's enlightening book, The Other Madisons, has not only been a labor of love for the author for 30 years but, more deeply, her life's purpose...Kearse's experiences with racism and those of her ancestors are deftly and sympathetically braided throughout the pages. Most notable is Mandy, who eloquently speaks to the reader through the author's imagination. Kearse came to understand that her ancestors must have possessed incredible inner strength and hope." 

"A beautiful, sometimes wrenching, meditation on the brutality at the center of American history and the gnarled, complex power dynamics it has spawned in every facet of American life, from the halls of power to individual households."

"A compelling saga... Kearse, a very worthy storyteller carries the reader along as she deliberately and forcefully expounds on a narrative, abundant in its details — even though basically oral... In a way, Kearse’s quest to fill out portions of her story resembles the quest of two generations ago by author Alex Haley in his journey to find Roots: A Saga of an American Family... In all, Kearse spent 'more than 20 years traveling, researching and writing' about her ancestors. Get this book and relive her journey.” 

"A compelling saga that gives a voice to those that history tried to erase...Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read." 

★ 01/01/2020

As Kearse was growing up, her mother told her many times, "You're a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president." Historians have always presumed that President James Madison was infertile and had no children, but Kearse has done a remarkable job of revealing another side of this story. Kearse became the next family griot, one of the storytellers that had passed on this story through the generations, starting with Mandy, an enslaved woman. According to the family legend of the Black Madisons, Mandy fathered a daughter, Coreen, with James Madison, Sr., and President Madison fathered a son, Jim, with Coreen. Kearse has spent decades researching Madison's family history and her own genealogy to prove this connection, uncovering remarkable stories of enslaved and free African Americans in Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas. Since the one direct male descendant of James Madison's brother will not do a DNA test, Kearse acknowledges that this story cannot be proved definitively, but that does not change her sense of family identity. VERDICT A moving, beautifully told story that adds to our understanding of Madison along with African American genealogy and oral history.—Kate Stewart, Arizona Historical Soc., Tuscon

★ 2020-03-02
An African American pediatrician–turned–historical detective investigates her family’s history—and, by extension, that of America.

“Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.” So her mother told Kearse, who opens her account with invocations of the West African griot tradition of storytelling and oral history. That tradition found a place in slavery-era America because most slave owners did not allow enslaved people to learn to read and write. James Madison was different: He allowed his mixed-race son, Jim, to linger within hearing of education lessons. Given well-documented events at nearby Monticello, that Madison had such a son is a surprise only because he had no children with his wife, Dolley, which led many scholars to assume that he “was impotent, infertile, or both.” Evidently not. Enriching that history not just with stories, but with more tangible historical evidence, Kearse visits the plantation, speaking with archaeologists, historians, and the descendants of slaves, reading widely, discovering the long-unknown burial sites of ancestors. She also traveled to Africa and Portugal—for, as her grandfather had told her mother, “our history goes well beyond America’s boundaries.” That Jim was educated did not spare him from being sold, always aware that he was the son of a president. So, too, with the descendants, enslaved and then free, who carried the Madison story to new homes, to be incorporated into the narrative of Madison’s life, as Sally Hemings is in Thomas Jefferson’s. On that note, Kearse writes searchingly of Madison’s language in crafting the Constitution, in which the words “slave” and “slavery” did not appear but that spoke of “other persons”—acknowledged as humans, that is, but still left out. “I understood that this omission,” writes the author, “was why oral history was essential to African Americans having knowledge of how crucial we have always been to what this nation is.”

A Rootsfor a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history. (b/w illustrations)