Fortune: How Race Became Law

Next week, Brazos Press is releasing the new book by Lisa Sharon Harper, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World — and How to Repair It All. It’s a fascinating book as Lisa tells the story of her family intermingled with the history of this nation, especially in terms of race.

She talks about the book in this week’s episode of Dangerous Dogma.

We hope you’ll listen to that conversation, but we also wanted to share a bit of her book with you. So, we’re pleased to be able to bring you an excerpt from Fortune.

This section from the book looks at the life of Lisa’s seventh-great-grandmother Fortune, who was born in 1687 to a White woman and a Black enslaved man. The changing legal definitions of slavery and even race, as Lisa explains, “shaped Fortune’s future and the futures of all her descendants — myself included.”