Asale Angel-Ajani and her twin, the only Black children in a working-class white family, were shuffled between relatives, coming of age in a country that offered little refuge. Years later, Angel-Ajani dove into the archives, searching for an explanation for her family’s and her country’s contradictions, and for her own unshakeable anger.

What she found were records and stories of her ancestors enslaved and free, Indigenous and white, members of the KKK and Black fugitives of a justice system that was rarely just. How could so much love live alongside such hate and prejudice, within the same family? Forged by the violent systems that rewarded racial terror and segregation, Angel-Ajani’s ancestors built their lives together anyway, on the shaky foundation of love and cognitive dissonance.

Fugitive Archives reveals that we are not a country of strangers split into “us” and “them,” who merely need to get to know each other in order to empathize. We have always been deeply entangled. This story of one family’s grief, betrayal, and courage is a vital exploration of race and class, a map for survival and resistance, and a necessary reckoning—for only when we acknowledge the complex, messy truth of who we are as a country, can we shape a more just future.

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About the Author

Asale Angel-Ajani is a writer and anthropologist. She and her twin grew up as the only Black children in a working-class white family. In Fugitive Archives: My Family and the American Myth of Belonging, she takes up her family's records after her grandmother's death and finds ancestors enslaved and free, Indigenous and white, including Klan members and Black fugitives from the justice system. The book argues that Americans are not strangers split into "us" and "them." We have always been entangled. She is also the author of the novel A Country You Can Leave, a New York Times recommended book and Amazon Editors' Pick, and the nonfiction book Strange Trade. Her work has been featured on CNN, NPR, and in Ms. Magazine. She holds a PhD from Stanford, was a Hutchins Family Fellow at Harvard, and has received support from the Ford, Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations.