Fortune, Lisa Sharon Harper
Fortune, Lisa Sharon Harper
4 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Fortune
How Race Broke My Family and the World—and how to Repair it All

Author: Lisa Sharon Harper, Otis Moss

Narrator: Lisa Sharon Harper

Unabridged: 10 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/08/2022


Synopsis

Drawing on her lifelong journey to know her family's history, leading Christian activist Lisa Sharon Harper recovers the beauty of her heritage, exposes the brokenness that race has wrought in America, and casts a vision for collective repair.

Harper has spent three decades researching ten generations of her family history through DNA research, oral histories, interviews, and genealogy. Fortune, the name of Harper's first nonindigenous ancestor born on American soil, bore the brunt of the nation's first race, gender, and citizenship laws. As Harper traces her family's story through succeeding generations, she shows how American ideas, customs, and laws robbed her ancestors—and the ancestors of so many others—of their humanity and flourishing.

Fortune helps listeners understand how America was built upon systems and structures in ways that blessed some and cursed others, allowing Americans of European descent to benefit from the colonization, genocide, enslavement, rape, and exploitation of people of color. As Harper lights a path through national and religious history, she clarifies exactly how and when the world broke and shows the way to redemption for us all. The book culminates with a vision of truth telling, reparation, and forgiveness that leads to Beloved Community.

About Lisa Sharon Harper

Lisa Sharon Harper is a prolific speaker, activist, playwright, and the author of several books, including Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican . . . or Democrat and coauthor of Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith. Harper has been recognized by the Huffington Post as one of 50 Powerful Women Religious Leaders and is considered one of the nation's most influential voices on a faith-rooted approach to advocacy. She lives in Washington, DC.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Richard on October 31, 2021

As an adult with a disability, I've often expressed that while eugenics laws are, for the most part, a thing of the past, they are alive and well in the institutions, systems, cultures, and beliefs and practices that surround us. It is difficult to express how I felt reading Lisa Sharon Harper's "Fo......more

Goodreads review by Josh on January 28, 2022

There have been a lot of books about the history of race in the United States. There are several good books that push back against the established whitewashed narrative of history that downplays the atrocities of slavery, segregation, and racism. To those listening and looking, the unvarnished trut......more

Goodreads review by Traci on April 06, 2022

Remarkable. Lisa Sharon Harper went on a personal quest to find threads of her family history. I applaud her efforts and am delighted for her that she could track some of her ancestry. I lament with her over much of what she found. She skillfully wove her story in with history, making for a compelli......more

Goodreads review by David on July 30, 2024

Read my review on StoryGraph! [URL not allowed] - The chapter on forgiveness and truth telling is truly excellent. One to turn to again and again. Loved the historical explorations and emphasis on loving your lineage. We need Lisa’s voice.......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on March 02, 2022

I found the author’s personal story so powerful in seeing how it tied into the larger story of race in the US. I listened to the audiobook but think I would have appreciated it more reading a hard copy.......more