Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy a long read in this special Sunday edition of Today in Books featuring Book Riot’s director of content and longtime fan of generational sagas, S. Zainab Williams. A great generational saga is immersive and rich in family history. For Williams, these books inspired a deeply personal genealogy journey.

Generational sagas, much like historical fiction, occupy a distinct and cherished niche within the literary landscape. Their enduring popularity stems from a fundamental human yearning for connection and understanding. These narratives offer a profound immersion into the very fabric of our world, our civilizations, and ultimately, ourselves. While the exploration of diverse experiences beyond our immediate lives holds immense value, there are moments when the quest for knowledge turns inward, seeking resonance within the vestiges of our own ancestral roots. These stories act as potent anchors, momentarily assuaging a deep-seated hunger for belonging.

This realization struck S. Zainab Williams, Director of Content at Book Riot and a devoted admirer of generational sagas, with particular force after finishing Nikesha Elise Williams’s The Seven Daughters of Dupree. This novel, the latest in a long line of generational epics that have captured Williams’s attention, served as a powerful catalyst, illuminating the core of her passion for this genre. As an African American and diasporic Southeast Asian woman, Williams has long harbored a desire to delve beneath the surface of history, to unearth the rich soil of her heritage. It was through the recurring literary device of inherited relics in these narratives that she finally understood this deeply personal drive.

Literary Echoes of Ancestral Connection

In Charmaine Wilkerson’s Good Dirt, an antique clay vessel serves as a tangible link to the past. Essie Chambers’s Swift River features old and new correspondence that bridges temporal divides. And in The Seven Daughters of Dupree, a passed-down Bible inscribed with a handwritten list of names connects characters to their forebears. These novels, among many others, illustrate how fictional characters are often bequeathed tangible objects that serve as conduits to generations gone by.

However, for many, the reality of possessing such heirlooms is far from guaranteed. The legacy of slavery in America, for instance, stripped individuals of not only their freedom and families but also any semblance of material inheritance. In the brutal struggle for survival, the preservation of scant possessions or even oral histories often took a backseat to the immediate needs of sustenance and safety. Consequently, the connective tissue of oral traditions, vital to the continuity of many cultures and families, can become frayed, lost, or neglected over time. The absence of such tangible or remembered connections, coupled with a particularly poignant scene in The Seven Daughters of Dupree, ultimately compelled Williams to embark on her own genealogical research.

The Personal Quest for Roots

Williams’s personal journey into her ancestry has been a complex and often fragmented undertaking. Her efforts to glean information about her estranged paternal African American and Trinidadian family have yielded only scattered fragments. Similarly, her maternal Malaysian, Malayalam, and potentially other ancestral lines are shrouded in inconsistent and often disputed narratives. Frustrated by the limitations of direct inquiry, Williams turned to a more modern approach, investing in an Ancestry.com DNA test, and awaiting the results with palpable anticipation.

This foray into genetic genealogy was not an entirely new endeavor for Williams. Her initial engagement with DNA testing predated her decision to pursue more intensive genealogical research, a step she deemed essential for her aspirations as a fiction writer. Her commitment to "OwnVoices" literature, a movement that gained significant traction in September 2015, coincided with her subscribing to Ancestry.com in October 2015. This period marked a significant shift in her perspective. The previously daunting prospect of her multiracial identity rendering her an outsider began to recede, replaced by the growing awareness that her unique heritage could offer a distinct and valuable voice in storytelling.

Navigating Identity Through Literature and DNA

Williams initially envisioned writing Young Adult fiction, a field then actively discussing the scarcity of stories from marginalized communities penned by authors from those same communities. She actively sought out "OwnVoices" literature, gravitating towards Asian American narratives. Her infrequent but impactful visits to Singapore, where she sometimes felt an almost familial connection to passersby, helped alleviate a sense of imposture within that cultural context.

The vastness of Asia, encompassing a multitude of ethnicities, presented challenges in finding specific Singaporean children’s literature. This led her to seek broader relatability in works like Thanhhà Lai’s Listen, Slowly and Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After. Her exploration also extended to adult speculative fiction by Malaysian authors, including Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride and Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. The global phenomenon of Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, with its popular culture impact and subsequent film adaptation, introduced a wider audience to Singapore. While Williams felt a sense of pride, she acknowledged that the affluent, Chinese Singaporean experience depicted in the novel felt distant from her own family’s Muslim and Southerly-indigenous Singaporean background. More profoundly, these narratives underscored her own disconnection from her Asian heritage, as she found herself relating more to characters who, like her, navigated the complexities of feeling lost amidst their own people, grappling with the delicate threads of understanding.

The absence of formal Malay language instruction in her upbringing, a consequence of her mother’s generation prioritizing English proficiency, became a significant barrier. Her mother’s parents, like many of their generation in Singapore, recognized the pragmatic importance of English as one of the nation’s official languages. This linguistic divide later presented obstacles when Williams sought to connect with older Singaporean relatives, such as her Nani. The desire to learn family recipes and hear ancestral stories surfaced too late in life, highlighting the irretrievable loss associated with a lack of linguistic fluency.

A vivid memory from a family visit illustrates this communication gap. During a gathering with her late grandfather’s extended family, a group she rarely encountered, Williams and her sister attempted to document the oral histories being shared. Armed with a tape recorder, they were immersed in a cacophony of voices, each vying to contribute their knowledge or beliefs about their lineage. The inability to understand the elders, coupled with her mother’s inclination to defend her own version of events rather than facilitate translation, left the young researchers feeling like unsuccessful detectives. They departed the kampung with ringing ears and a profound sense of unanswered questions.

Unraveling Ancestral Threads: DNA and Historical Records

Years later, upon receiving her Ancestry.com DNA results, Williams found herself re-evaluating the fragmented information she had painstakingly collected. While acknowledging the inexact nature of genetic science and the occasional updates to her results, she meticulously examined the regional percentages. Her mother’s side indicated predominantly Western/Southern Indian and Sri Lankan heritage, while her father’s revealed West African ancestry. These percentages, however, did not provide the profound sense of fulfillment she had anticipated. Instead, she found greater satisfaction in the narratives of fictional sisters and their interwoven generational journeys in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing. This novel, one of her all-time favorites, offers powerful stories spanning from the distant past to the present, illuminating a lost history for African Americans whose ancestral roots were devastated by slavery—a history that cannot be captured by mere percentages.

The profound impact of The Seven Daughters of Dupree prompted Williams to renew her Ancestry.com subscription, this time to delve deeper into the available records and construct a detailed family tree. One particular genealogical branch led her to her 3rd great-grandparents, Richard Middleton and Elvina Crafton. Research revealed their enslavers, the prominent Middletons and Craftons, who were significant plantation owners in antebellum Edgefield, South Carolina. A "Slave Record" from 1860 documented the sale of Elvina and several children to Martha Crafton for $1,300, a stark and harrowing detail that underscored the human cost of this historical period.

Drawing parallels with Isabel Wilkerson’s seminal work, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Williams contemplated the experience of her great-grandmother Julia. She imagined Julia’s arduous decision to leave Edgefield in the late 1920s, part of the First Great Migration, accompanied by Arthur from Trinidad. Their journey took them first to Brooklyn, New York, and subsequently to San Francisco, California. Julia later separated from her great-grandfather and ventured to Guadalajara, Mexico. In Durango, she found work as an extra in Buck and the Preacher, a film directed by and starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Her uncle, a playwright based in Harlem, self-published a novel about their paternal family, Tribal Bonds. While fictionalized, the book resonated with Williams, as she recognized names, places, and even stories mirroring her great-grandmother’s cinematic experience within the records she had uncovered.

The Ongoing Tapestry of Family History

Currently, Williams’s mother is in Singapore, retired and tending to her own mother. Williams has entrusted her mother with the crucial task of questioning her 90-year-old grandmother, a role Williams cannot fulfill herself. Her mother has pledged to meticulously record and translate her grandmother’s responses. This grandmother revealed that her own great-grandfather had migrated from Yemen to Kerala for the textile trade, and that intermarriage within their lineage made her side of the family Malayalam. While Williams acknowledges that she may not be able to bring these stories to life with the same narrative power as authors like Wilkerson, she possesses a vivid imagination that, when combined with her family’s oral histories and public records, will enable her to explore and interpret these ancestral narratives.

Generational sagas have transcended their role as mere immersive entertainment for Williams. They have served as potent catalysts, igniting her journey of understanding the history that has shaped her and the ongoing process of historical creation. This personal quest for ancestral knowledge has become more significant to her than the singular goal of sharing her own history through a novel. Her ultimate aim is to be able to recount her family’s story to herself and her children, ensuring that they are enriched by the deepest roots of their heritage and feel securely grounded, prepared to face whatever storms lie ahead.

The Significance of Generational Narratives

The appeal of generational sagas lies in their capacity to weave together individual destinies with the broader sweep of history. They allow readers to witness the ripple effects of past decisions and societal forces across multiple lifetimes. For individuals with fragmented or obscured family histories, these novels can offer a template for imagining and reconstructing their own pasts. The literary exploration of themes like migration, resilience, loss, and the enduring power of familial bonds provides a framework for understanding complex personal histories.

Furthermore, the increasing accessibility of genealogical tools, such as DNA testing and extensive archival databases, has democratized the process of historical discovery. This intersection of personal narrative and scientific inquiry allows individuals to connect with their heritage in unprecedented ways. The data generated by DNA tests, while not a complete picture, can provide clues and connections that prompt further research into historical records, offering a more nuanced understanding of ancestral origins and movements.

The act of researching one’s genealogy can be an emotionally charged experience, bringing forth a spectrum of feelings from pride and connection to sorrow and anger, particularly when confronting the legacies of oppression and injustice. The journey of uncovering difficult truths, such as those related to slavery or displacement, is an integral part of understanding one’s complete ancestral narrative. These narratives, when brought to light, contribute to a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of history.

The literary and personal exploration of ancestry, as exemplified by S. Zainab Williams’s journey, underscores the profound and multifaceted relationship between storytelling and identity. Generational sagas, in particular, serve as powerful mirrors and windows, reflecting our shared human experience while inviting us to peer into the complex tapestry of our individual and collective pasts. The ongoing quest for understanding our roots, whether through the pages of a book or the analysis of DNA, is a testament to the enduring human need to know where we come from in order to better understand where we are going.