The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family

by Dorothy Roberts

From Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and a writer who “has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades” (Bryan Stevenson), comes a spirited and riveting memoir of growing up in an interracial family in 1960s Chicago and a daughter’s journey to understand her parents’ marriage—and her own identity.

Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s where relationships barely crossed the “colorline.” Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage wasn’t just a part of her upbringing, it was a shared mission. Her father, an anthropologist, spent her entire childhood working on a book about Black-white marriages—a project he never finished but shaped every aspect of their family life.

As a 21-year-old graduate student, Dorothy’s father dedicated himself to the study of interracial marriage and her mother soon became his full-time partner in that work. Together over the years they interviewed over 500 couples and assembled stunning stories about interracial marriages that took place as early as the 1880s—studying, but also living, championing, and believing in their power to advance social equality.

Decades later, while sorting through her father’s papers, Roberts uncovers a truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her her father’s research didn’t begin with her parents’ love story—it came long before it. This discovery forces her to wrestle with her father’s intentions, her own views about interracial relationships, and where she fits in that story. Rather than finish the book her father never published, Roberts immerses herself in their archive of interviews to trace the story of her parents and to better understand her own.

Though grounded in her parents’ research, it’s Roberts’ captivating storytelling that drives this memoir. In following the arc of her parents’ interviews and marriage, The Mixed Marriage Project invites us into the everyday lives of interracial couples in Chicago over four decades. Along the way, Roberts reflects on her own childhood as a Black girl with a white father, and how those experiences shaped her into one of today’s most prominent public thinkers and scholars on race. Blurring the boundaries between the political and the personal, between memoir and history, The Mixed Marriage Project is a deeply moving meditation on family, race, identity, and love.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Race, Biography Memoir, Adult

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 10, 2026

About the author

Dorothy Roberts is a scholar, professor, author and social justice advocate, and currently the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She has published a range of groundbreaking articles and books analyzing issues of law, race, gender, health, class and social inequality, including Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (1997), Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2002) and, most recently Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century (2012).

Reviews

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dorothy Roberts has written a phenomenal book, The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family. Dorothy had a White father and a Jamaican mother. Throughout his life as a college student and his career as an anthropology professor, Dorothy's father interviewed over 500 interracial couples from the 1930s through the 1980s. His goal was to write a book about his findings. He passed away without writing the book and all of his files were given to Dorothy.

Initially Dorothy thought she would publish a book about her father's findings. As she dove into the detailed notes from all of the interviews, Dorothy realized she would write a book that included information about her father's research as well as lessons about love, race, and family.

There were several significant surprises as Dorothy reviewed the research. The historical context is thorough, and her parents interacted with several leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the themes is whether interracial marriages were due to love or to make a social statement that would ultimately lead to racial equality. One of the most troubling aspects is the disparaging remarks about Black women that are made by White women, Black men, and White men.

The Mixed Marriage Project is beautifully written with love and honor for her parents. It's thought-provoking and gut-wrenching about race relations and humanity.

This is my first book by Dorothy Roberts, and I have put her other books on my TBR list:

* Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
* Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
* Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
* Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare
* Sex, Power and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond

Recently I read More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew by John K. Blake. Blake's father was Black, and his mother was White. His mother left the family when Blake was a young child. His memoir traces his journey of self-discovery.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I highly recommend The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting project of memoir and family history and sociology. I liked the book but it didn’t wow me. It felt like it could’ve been more focused and yet what it did it did well. Gave me plenty to think about and I might grow to appreciate it more either time.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mostly disappointing development of an interesting premise. Dorothy Roberts is the daughter of a white anthropology professor who devoted his career to studying interracial marriages in Chicago—and entered into one himself with her Jamaican mother. The book was inspired by the author going through hundreds of interviews with mixed couples after his death, and weaves together accounts of the couples he met with her own thoughts and reminisces.

The couples’ stories at least are interesting. The author’s father began interviewing them in the 1930s, including some who married in the late 19th century, and carried on the project through the 1980s. Some bits that stood out to me:

- Many of the older couples claimed a sort of raceblindness I would never have expected from that era. One woman, born just after the Civil War and the daughter of a slave, told the author’s father, “At the time I married my husband I didn’t think about his being of another race. That never entered my mind, and I don’t think it ever entered his.”

- By contrast, some of the 1960s couples were idealistic students who seem to have married as a sort of defiance to the system and personal civil rights demonstration, but these marriages often didn’t last. (However, this motivation is largely imputed by other people, and a common theme in the interviews is people being less generous with others than they are with themselves.)

- Although Chicago didn’t have Jim Crow laws, it was highly segregated and interracial couples faced widespread discrimination. Landlords often refused to rent to them and they were forced to live in segregated Black neighborhoods. Both spouses risked losing their jobs if their employers found out about their interracial marriage. One white wife, who gave a fake address in a white neighborhood to get hired, was noticed by her boss getting on the “wrong” train at the end of the day, followed by a co-worker and ultimately fired when her real address was discovered. White parents found themselves across the color line from their mixed-race children, who were not welcome in the same neighborhoods or even at family funerals.

- There’s apparently a stereotype of the white spouse in an interracial marriage being the more radical of the two, likely because they were the ones more shunned by their own group. But the opposite happened with a cohort of European immigrant women who married Black men, apparently in ignorance about the amount of racism that existed in the U.S. This wasn’t because these women hailed from multicultural utopias—for the most part they’d never met a non-white person before arriving in the U.S.—but because segregation was not intuitive. Many of these women regretted their marriages, finding that they made it harder to integrate into American society than if they’d married another immigrant. The level of surprise seems to have faded with time and perhaps mass media—the WWII-era European brides seem better prepared, though they and their husbands often wound up choosing to relocate to Europe.

- People involved in something considered transgressive don’t necessarily stop at one transgression, hence the surprising number of interracial couples also involved in a nudist group.

So that was interesting enough to read, although the author’s father seems to have left behind just interview transcripts and no broader analysis (perhaps related to why he never finished his book).

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the author’s own contributions to add much. The first two-thirds or so of the book is just an account of her reading the transcripts, telling us where she was sitting at the time and occasionally interjecting a “that’s racist!” Despite being a professor herself, her analysis feels social-media-level, and she seems to take pride in having little empathy for anyone unlike herself (meaning medium- to dark-skinned Black women, whose problems, she likes to remind the reader whenever anyone else’s woes threaten to draw attention, are worse than anyone else’s. She even specifically disclaims empathy for mixed-race people who feel they don’t fit into either group).

It’s a shame because there are so many places the author could have dug deeper, but didn’t. For instance, she simply side-eyes her father’s “obsession” with noting down people’s physical appearances in the early decades (a strange way to characterize consistency, as a study is only useful if the same information is gathered for all participants) rather than investigating the evolution of American society’s views on describing people’s bodies. How did it happen that this was normal in the 1930s, but is sometimes considered impolite today? What does that say about us?

The last third of the book gets more into her own memoirs, but these are likewise superficial, a long chain of anecdotes strung together like beads without telling any particular story. In her account, her parents’ marriage was flawless, her childhood idyllic, and the more interesting bits (like spending two years of her adolescence in Egypt) not delved into at all. The marketing leans heavily on the author’s discomfort with the notion that her father might have wanted to marry a Black woman all along, for reasons political, academic, sexual, or some combination—but her love and respect for him as a husband and father means this aspect consists merely of her noting her discomfort and moving on. Which on the one hand, it’s great that her parents’ interracial marriage was so strong and successful and that he was such a good father to her and her sisters, and I didn’t want the author to make something problematic that wasn’t. But on the other, this is not the book about someone rethinking their family that I was promised.

In the end, for a memoir this took a long time to read, and wasn’t as thoughtful or analytical as I’d hoped. In a sense I suppose the author managed to finish the book that her father never could. But a collection of interview transcripts does not a book make—or at least not a very good one.

[Ivoree Malcom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dorothy Roberts’ The Mixed Marriage Project is part memoir, part excavation of her father’s unfinished anthropological study of Black–white interracial couples in Chicago. As the daughter of a Jamaican Black mother & a white father of German descent, Roberts positions herself as both subject & analyst—sorting through decades of interviews, files, & field notes her father compiled but never transformed into a book. That absence is telling.

Despite publishing opportunities & years of research, her father never produced the definitive text he envisioned. Roberts frames his work as profound & ahead of its time, but it’s difficult not to question that characterization. The research, as presented, feels more observational than groundbreaking—more archival than transformative. He recorded stories, compiled data, & amassed files, yet never translated any of it into actionable scholarship or meaningful intervention. In the end, the project reads less like humanitarian work & more like an unfinished intellectual obsession.

It’s also impossible to ignore how his whiteness afforded him the luxury of mediocrity. A Black scholar sitting on decades of research about race without publishing might have faced professional consequences. He did not. He moved through academia with the ease of someone whose credibility was never in question, even without producing the promised magnum opus. That privilege allowed him to collect, theorize, & speculate without ever fully delivering.

What makes this more troubling is that he doesn’t appear to have meaningfully involved himself in civil rights struggles or racial justice movements of his time. If interracial marriage was truly his answer to white supremacy, where was the tangible activism? Where was the engagement beyond interviews & personal theorizing? The disconnect creates the impression that his fixation on Black–white intimacy may have been less about dismantling oppression & more about a personal fascination with the Black race itself.

His central belief—that increasing Black–white marriages would dissolve racism—rests on a simplistic premise: if a white person could love & marry a Black person, the broader society could surely coexist in less intimate spaces. He was convinced that biracial children would uniquely disrupt racial hierarchy because of their ability to navigate both racial circles. But racism is structural, economic, & institutional. It is not cured through proximity alone. The idea feels naïve, almost utopian, & detached from material realities. Only someone who isn't negatively impacted by racism could ever have the privilege to have such a perspective (i.e. Roberts' father in this case).

The personal & professional lines blur in unsettling ways. A man who studies interracial intimacy marries a Black woman & maintains detailed files—including on his own family. That overlap raises uncomfortable questions about motive. Was his marriage purely love, or just more fieldwork? How does one process the possibility that their existence functioned, in part, as research evidence?

Certain anecdotes amplify the discomfort. Gifting his future wife a book & telling her the author used to be his dream woman—until she came along—reads as tone-deaf & arrogant. Waiting until his own mother passed away before marrying her suggests a willingness to prioritize white familial comfort over his partner’s dignity. These aren’t minor quirks; they expose deeper contradictions.

His assertion that interracial marriages are easier than interfaith ones—because Black & white Americans are supposedly more culturally aligned than people of different religions—further reveals the limits of his framework. Religion is chosen; race is not. Equating the two flattens the lived reality of racial identity.

Roberts attempts to reframe many of these moments generously, sometimes attributing questionable behavior to admiration for her mixed heritage or to intellectual earnestness. At times, those reframings feel strained. The scattered photographs throughout the book—often loosely connected to the adjacent text—add to a sense of fragmentation rather than clarity.

I also struggled to finish this book because of some of the cringey perspectives presented throughout. The liberal optimism, the almost experimental framing of interracial family life, & the repeated validation of her father’s ideas made sections difficult to push through. Instead of feeling enlightened, I often felt secondhand embarrassment & irritation.

Perhaps most unsettling is the way her father showcased her academic success as validation of his theory. It carries an uncomfortable subtext: proof that the experiment worked. That dynamic underscores the ominous undertone running through the narrative.

Ultimately, The Mixed Marriage Project feels less like a celebration of interracial love & more like a meditation on unrealized ambition, privilege, & ideological blind spots. For all the years of data collection, there were no clear policy proposals, no organized interventions, no sustained justice work—just boxes of notes & an unfulfilled promise. The project, as presented, feels like a missed opportunity: decades of access & inquiry that resulted in little structural impact.

The book is undeniably thought-provoking, but it also leaves lingering questions about motive, legacy, & the difference between studying race & actually challenging racism.

*I received an advance review copy for free & I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

#ThankGodForARCs

[Stanjay Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first saw the title of this book, I was instantly intrigued. My family includes several interracial relationships and marriages, so I was particularly interested in reading about how these relationships were explored in this text. The author presents a compelling narrative that chronicles her deep dive into her father's —and, to a lesser but not insignificant extent, her mother's-writing and research on interracial marriage. I was especially drawn to the recounting of her white father's interview notes from numerous couples, his academic journey, his marriage to her Black mother, and his experiences as a father.

The book explores important questions, including motivations for pursuing interracial marriage, the challenges of navigating such marriages in America, comparisons between interracial and interfaith marriages, and the impact of these unions on childbearing and the experiences of mixed-race children. Told through the lens of a woman raised by a white father and a Black mother, the author moves beyond her father's original research to examine her own lived experiences, her evolving self-identity, and how these experiences shaped her subsequent career.

This was a well-researched and thoughtfully written book that presents nuanced arguments and diverse perspectives while inviting readers to reflect on their own beliefs and assumptions. The depth and heart of this work challenged me to think more expansively about relationships and their generational impact.

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does one rate a book like this? This was part memoir/part reporting of the research carried out by her father on interracial relationships in Chicago prior to the 1960s. A woman wrestling with her identity as a black girl with a white father and her stance on interracial marriages. I sensed that this book was written as a project to the author herself more so than a book written to the masses and I applaud that.

I am white Canadian married to an African immigrant and the title of this book intrigued me which is how I picked it up. While I don't fully grasp the context of racism in America between black and white, it has influenced my life in Canada as a white woman. Being married to someone outside my race has had its challenges. And also its enriching perspectives that have helped heal some of my prejudices I was groomed to believe.

A lot of what this author wrote was food for thought. Sometimes making me uncomfortable, this book examined race/marriage and intentions. I always love to learn more about racial history and am grateful that we've come so far as humans but still have more work to do. The author argues interracial marriages won't solve the racism problem and I agree. But it does provide a unique perspective on shared humanity personally.

This book was well written for its purpose but I found it to be too dry at times with a disjointed flow. At times it felt like random musings on the authors own life and then other people's stories and her father's interviews. It was hard to rate this book but I am glad I read it!

[Renée | apuzzledbooklover · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of notes that the author's father wrote from interviews with interracial couples as early as the 1930s.

Her father was a white man, an anthropologist who devoted much of his life to studying interracial marriage, believing it was key ending racial inequality. This belief deeply shaped their family life in segregated Chicago.

Her mother was a Black Jamaican woman who worked at the VA helping veterans with trauma. She also worked side by side with her husband on his project as a research assistant.

The author spent a fair amount of time recounting parts of her father’s notes and transcripts from his interviews. At times, this was dry to read about.

I honestly found the sections that detailed the author’s own experiences and her relationship with her father, in particular, the most interesting. And I loved the things she learned about both of her parents from her father’s notes in the studies.

[Thanks to the publisher, Atria and NetGalley for the advance electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.]

[Maegan Aronson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Atria books, for a copy of “The Mixed Marriage Project.”

I was originally drawn to this book as it (selfishly) relates to me and my own interracial marriage. What I got was so much more—ethnographic research dating back decades, historical and political timelines, and an analysis of the author’s parents’ lives (academically, professionally, and personally). Ethnographic research will always be my favorite qualitative research method.

Roberts doesn’t shy away from asking hard questions about the sociological dimensions of interracial intimacy. Her delivery of her parents’ research was relayed with love and reverence while balancing a critical review of her parents’ choices in historical and social context. She was able to both honor them and examine their legacy.

Bravo, Dorothy Roberts. I commend you for being able to balance the respect you have for your parents without compromising your analysis.

[Jordan Tomasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

*I received this book for free in a giveaway. Thank you to the author.*

I love the interwoven journey of the author learning more about her parents while reviewing their life's work. I found that the two "storylines" blended together to improve rather than retract from each other.

I LOVE first hand accounts of history, especially when it is something that I personally could never experience. It is so important to broaden your views in life and understand that how you live is not how everyone else does.

I am also honored to have received an ARC copy of the book and will definitely be keeping this for my library.

[Klaudia Piaseczna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really did not enjoy The Mixed Marriage Project. Perhaps I’m approaching it from a too European perspective, but the way the author describes her parents, their relationship, and her childhood felt oddly childish. Throughout the book, it seemed as though she believes in her idea of her father as a concept rather than understanding him as a complex human being. His research was clearly embedded in the historical context in which it was conducted, yet she often sounds surprised, even unsettled, by the vocabulary he used, as if it could be detached from its time. That disconnect made the narrative feel strangely ungrounded.
It’s possible that listening to the audiobook shaped my reaction. Hearing an adult woman repeatedly refer to her father as “daddy” was, at times, distracting and uncomfortable. Perhaps reading it in print would have created more distance and nuance, but as an audiobook, the tone only amplified what I found frustrating about the book.

[Cheryl Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Formally, this book reminded me of Ada Calhoun's Also a Poet, in which a woman tries to both honor and interrogate her father by picking up his long-abandoned research project. Both are beautiful examples of intergenerational dialogue. The other thing that stood out to me is that this book—Roberts' account of combing through her father's hundreds of interviews with Black/white couples from the 1930s through the '70s—can be placed on my small mental bookshelf of memoirs by people who had (mostly) happy childhoods. Roberts paints a loving portrait of both her white anthropologist father, who was relentlessly curious and genuinely open-minded, and her Jamaican mother, who was highly educated, strict-but-kind, and deeply invested in her family, even as she mourned her own academic career. Roberts never buys into her father's steadfast optimism about marriage as a way of bridging the color line—she notes couples who are colorist social climbers rather than beacons of racial harmony and acceptance—but she does come to see how the qualities both parents imbued in her can make the world better. That's a lovely conclusion to a project that is equal parts gentle and rigorous, generous and unflinching.

[Desirae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dorothy Roberts’s The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family is an intellectually ambitious and emotionally layered work that blends archival research with personal reflection. The result is undeniably rich, but also somewhat uneven—a book that feels divided between two compelling projects that never fully cohere. My response to it, much like the text itself, is mixed.

At its strongest, the book draws from the remarkable archive left behind by Roberts’s father, a white anthropologist who spent decades interviewing interracial couples, beginning as early as the 1930s. These interviews—numbering in the hundreds and spanning generations—are the book’s most fascinating and valuable component. They offer a rare, intimate glimpse into relationships that existed under intense social scrutiny, from couples in the late 19th century to those navigating the civil rights era. The historical scope alone is impressive, and Roberts’s decision to foreground these voices gives the book an archival weight that feels genuinely important.

Through these accounts, we see how interracial couples understood their own relationships: some insisted race was irrelevant to their love, while others viewed their unions as political acts tied to broader struggles for equality. The interviews reveal patterns of housing discrimination, social ostracism, and the everyday negotiations required to sustain such marriages. These sections feel like a lost sociological treasure—arguably worthy of publication on their own.

Yet Roberts does not simply present her father’s research. Instead, she interweaves it with a memoir of her upbringing in 1960s Chicago, as the daughter of a Black Jamaican mother and a white father. This dual structure—half archival reconstruction, half personal narrative—is where the book becomes more complicated. Roberts’s childhood was shaped by what she calls “the book,” her father’s unfinished project, which dominated family life and blurred the line between scholarship and lived experience.

The central tension emerges when Roberts discovers that her father’s fascination with interracial marriage predated his relationship with her mother. What she had long believed to be a love story that inspired intellectual inquiry is inverted: the research came first, and the marriage followed.
This revelation introduces an unsettling ambiguity about his motives. Was their family, in some sense, an extension of his academic project? Roberts raises this question but never fully resolves it, and the result is a portrait of her father that feels elusive, even opaque.

This elusiveness is one of the book’s most frustrating aspects. Despite the wealth of material—interviews, letters, field notes—the father remains difficult to pin down. Roberts interrogates his belief that interracial marriage could serve as a vehicle for racial progress, ultimately challenging it with her own more skeptical view that such relationships do not inherently dismantle systemic racism. Still, his inner life, his emotional motivations, and even his ethical boundaries remain somewhat indistinct. The reader is left with questions that the book seems reluctant, or unable, to answer.

Roberts’s memoir sections are similarly complex. She writes candidly about her own evolving identity as a Black woman with a white father, including periods in which she concealed or even felt ashamed of that aspect of her background. This admission is one of the book’s more striking elements, particularly as she reflects on what might be described as a form of reverse prejudice—directed not at a marginalized group, but at a source of privilege she found difficult to reconcile. At the same time, she acknowledges that her father’s race afforded her tangible advantages, complicating any straightforward narrative of identity or belonging.

These reflections are thoughtful and often moving, but they also contribute to the book’s sense of fragmentation. The memoir raises deeply personal questions—about shame, loyalty, and inheritance—without always integrating them smoothly into the broader historical narrative. At times, it feels as though Roberts is writing two books simultaneously: one about her father’s unfinished sociological project, and another about her own coming to terms with her family and identity.

This structural divide may be intentional, reflecting the very tensions Roberts is trying to explore. Still, it can leave the reader uncertain about the book’s ultimate focus. Should it be read as a scholarly excavation, a family portrait, or a meditation on race and intimacy? It is all of these things, but not always in a way that feels fully unified.

There is also a lingering question about what remains unexplored. Given the richness of the material—particularly the interviews and the family dynamic—one wonders whether certain aspects could have been developed further. Roberts touches on her mother’s role as a research partner and intellectual collaborator, for instance, but this thread sometimes feels overshadowed by the focus on her father. Similarly, the ethical implications of studying interracial couples while living within one are raised but not exhaustively examined.

In the end, The Mixed Marriage Project is a compelling but imperfect book. Its historical material is invaluable, and its personal reflections are often incisive. Yet its hybrid structure and the lingering opacity of its central figure prevent it from fully achieving the synthesis it seems to aim for. It is, perhaps fittingly, a book about unresolved questions—about love, race, family, and intention—and it leaves many of those questions open.

[Angee Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the death of her father, Dorothy Roberts was sorting through his things - including boxes and boxes of his research. At the age of 21, Dorothy's father, Robert, became intrigued with interracial marriages and began to study the social/economic/political consequences of those marriages. Over the span of almost 5 decades, Robert went on to interview hundreds of couples. And even with all this research, his work was never published, until now.

This book is part memoir, part publication of Robert's research. Readers can enjoy transcripts and insights to the countless interviews conducted. Dororthy masterfully paints a vivid history lesson of life and romance between races before Loving v. Virginia, using her father's research. Couples would be married in one state, but other states would not recognize their marriages. Furthermore, opposition to interracial marriages was primarily enforced through informal power, as opposed to explicit laws. There is a great deal of lost history surrounding the hardships many of these couples faced not just within their own families, but society as a whole. Many couples were evicted from homes, fired from jobs, and even arrested. Some people were even killed for daring to love someone of a different race. Robert's research tirelessly worked to showcase the segregation, discrimination, exclusion, and intimidation these interracial couples faced long before the courts stepped in.

The book also covers Dorothy's life growing up as a mixed child (white father, black mother). There were much she had to learn about navigating a world that would not always take kindly to children of mixed races. After dealing with racism and identity crises for most of her life, Dorothy was initially opposed to mixed marriages, that is, until she dove deeper into her father's research. Confronting some of her own biases, Dorothy explains how her life was impacted by a mixed marriage and where she stands today with the topic.

While I greatly enjoyed reading this book, it was quite long. I do wish it would have been split into two different books - her father's research and then her own separate memoir. Dorothy has a lot to say and I loved reading it. However, the jumps between stories and topics were a bit jarring, at times, and it made the writing feel clunky and disorganized. Nevertheless, Dorothy excellently portrays both her history and the history of these marriages in a manner that really felt solid. I really appreciated the additions of couples that weren't just black and white, but also different races and how they also dealt with hardships. And I also really enjoyed how Dorothy walks the reader through how she initially felt about interracial love and its intricacies and how that evolved with time and her father's research. And if Dorothy ever expands on the life of her mother in a different book, I will be the first in line to buy it. She seemed like a remarkable woman.

If you love history, are a child of mixed parents, or are even in an interracial relationship yourself, I do recommend checking this book out. And even if you don't fit any of those categories, still check it out - you'll definitely learn something new.

Much appreciation to the author/publisher/NetGalley for the complimentary copy. It was an honor and privilege to review this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

[Madison ✨ (mad.lyreading) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mixed Marriage Project is a mix of a memoir by the author, Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body, and an anthropological work completed by Roberts on her father's behalf. Roberts's father (Robert Roberts, I kid you not) was a white man in Chicago who was extremely interested (academically? personally? who can tell, even Roberts has no idea) in the idea of mixed marriages as a form of racial integration. He was an anthropologist and kept meticulous notes, so Roberts took a summer where she rented an apartment in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago, near where she grew up, to go through the notes herself.

As someone who has lost a parent, I understand Roberts' desire to complete this project for her father. She got to reminisce about some of her childhood, as some of the notes overlapped, and she was able to learn parts of her parents' lives after they had already passed. You can feel Roberts' love for her parents as she calls them "Mommy" and "Daddy" even though she is about to turn 70. I am happy for Roberts and her sisters that she was able to complete this project.

This book was much more for Roberts than the reader, and that's okay. This will not be a major hit the way Killing the Black Body was, because it is less applicable to the average reader. Since I am knowledgeable of the areas of Chicago she discussed, I found the racial history of the area to be fascinating. Overall, though, I was a bit bored. I hope Roberts was able to get what she wanted out of this project.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Rhea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful memoir honoring Roberts’ parents. Also a little meandering and repetitive at times, in the way that recollection and reflection tend to be.

[Kiara Slater · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this topic is so interesting! I’m fascinated by the racism that STILL lingers in groups of “mixed race” couples.

[Kelsey Mangeni (kman.reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m very glad I read this book—the last chapter made me pretty uncomfortable as a mom of mixed-race kids, but a lot to think about so maybe good uncomfortable? But most of the book was pretty dry. The jacket copy says explicitly states Dorothy Robert’s is not writing the book her father was never able to finish, but she essentially is—just adding reflections on her own childhood at the end, and interspersing where in the rental house she was sitting while reading through her parents’ transcripts. The flap also claims Roberts’ uncovering a “truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her family” which is the detail that got me to buy this book, but that truth is completely missable, and not at all juicy in my opinion, so don’t go in for that.

[Mabel Neri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley for allowing me to review this book. I don’t think there is a way that you could rate this kind of book. I feel like history what people went through and all of those situations make a great story and increase your knowledge so I will recommend for you to read it if you enjoy knowing what happened in history through the eyes of someone else.

[Vanessa D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 ⭐️

This was a deeply reflective and emotionally layered work that explores identity, legacy, and the quiet weight of unfinished stories. At its core, this book feels like an act of devotion—a daughter stepping into the intellectual and emotional space her father once occupied, determined to finish what he started.

One of the most compelling elements is how the narrative weaves family mémoire—not just memory in the traditional sense, but a living archive of generational experiences, silences, and truths that were never fully spoken. The author doesn’t simply recount the past; she interrogates it. Through her father’s research and her own lived perspective, we see how history is both inherited and reshaped.

What adds an even more thought-provoking tension is the subtle, lingering question: was this purely personal, or was it, in some way, a social experiment for her father? The blending of intimate family memory with that uncertainty gives the narrative a pause—a moment where the reader is asked to reconsider motive, intention, and the ethics of observation within one’s own life. It introduces a quiet discomfort that deepens the reading experience, making you question not only the father’s role, but how often personal lives intersect with intellectual curiosity in ways that aren’t fully acknowledged.

The idea of “finishing what her father started” therefore takes on added complexity. It’s no longer just about preservation—it’s about interpretation, and perhaps even reconciliation. The author is not only continuing his work, but also, in some ways, reclaiming it and redefining its meaning on her own terms.

What makes the book particularly resonant is how its layered themes still hold true today. Questions around race, belonging, cultural duality, and societal perception are not confined to the past—they echo strongly in contemporary conversations. The “mixed marriage” becomes more than a personal detail; it serves as a lens through which broader social tensions and progress are examined.

The writing is deliberate and introspective, occasionally dense where academic and personal narratives intertwine, but ultimately rewarding for readers willing to sit with its complexity. Some threads remain unresolved—but that, too, feels true to the nature of mémoire and inherited stories.

Overall, The Mixed Marriage Project is a powerful meditation on legacy, identity, and the blurred lines between lived experience and studied observation. It challenges readers to consider not only where they come from, but how those stories were shaped—and by whom.

[Viral · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really interesting reflective memoir on the nature of love and interracial relationships.

Dorothy Roberts wrote this book after finally going through the documents of her long-since deceased white father, Bob Roberts, who was a faculty member at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He spent many years studying mixed race relationships, especially in Chicago, and notably, had been doing since he was in graduate school. While Dorothy had been aware of this research growing up, she thought it had started later, when her father met her Black Caribbean mother in the early 50s - so the revelation that this had started significantly earlier, when he was a young man at UChicago in the 1930s recontextualizes many of these core memories.

We follow Dorothy as she goes through these interviews and notes, learning about how many different people over the years thought about interracial relationships in deeply segregated Chicago. We meet European immigrant women shocked that marrying a Black American citizen does not carry the social currency they expected, white women being forced to hide their relationship and address from their employers because they would get fired for being married to a Black man. We meet women and men who espouse misogynoir about Black women being unfit to raise children. But we also meet CPUSA members, civil rights activists, and everyday people, who all fall in love across racial lines and are forced to grapple with what that means. Throughout it, we see Dorothy reflect on her own childhood growing up in an interracial household and her discussions with her parents about what that meant and if it would make a difference.

It's a fascinating kind of book - not fully a memoir, not fully a history or sociology study, but not fully a collection of essays. It's a little bit of all of those things though, and it was a fascinating read. Highly recommend.

[Rachel Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Dorothy Roberts and Atria Books for a NetGalley ARC copy of The Mixed Marriage Project

5/5 ⭐

“Any lasting partnership requires each person to recognize the other’s individuality. Your partner isn't an extension of you - they have their own body, history, perspective, thoughts and feelings.” … “interracial couples might come to this realization more quickly because they have to contend with society’s assumption that they are fundamentally different”

I cannot express how powerful and meaningful this book has been to me, both from a historical standpoint and from the perspective of someone in an interracial relationship. “Enjoy” isn’t the right word to describe my time spent reading this book. While there were many happy moments there were far more spent on heavy reflection of my own relationship through the scope of what it would have looked like historically. I will always value the conversations sparked with my partner over shared quotes and pieces of history we learned together.

Along with her parent’s interviews and research the author also shares many stories surrounding her childhood during the civil rights movement of the 50s-60s, into adulthood and time spent in higher education. A theme highlighted several times through these retellings is how the author's view of her own racial identity has shifted at different points in her life. While not something I have personally experienced, I admired the author’s sincerity and insight while discussing this topic.

Overall I found The Mixed Marriage Project to be a beautifully written piece about both history and human nature and I will gladly be reading the author’s other works.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though intertwined throughout, I feel this book can be broken down into 3 distinct topics, each of which deserves its own rating:
-Original interviews from the author's dad: 4 stars
-Author's memoirs: 3 stars
-Author's analysis of her father's works: 1 star

The original interviews were fascinating to listen to (having listened to the audiobook of this text). Some of the questions and and answers were shocking to hear, but then I had to remember that these were interviews given in the 1930s and 1950s. This doesn't excuse the impertinent questions, but does give a glimpse into what life was like at that time. I was impressed with the candid responses the interviews garnered.

The author's personal memories of growing up in an interracial family in the 1960s were fine. They didn't wow me by any means, but felt like a calm walk through memory lane.

Then we get to the analysis that is liberally sprinkled throughout the book and buckle up, because we're in for a ride. I'm being kind calling it analysis when really she is harshly judging her father and everyone he interviewed through her 2026 political activist lens. It is cringy at best and downright disrespectful most of the time (especially when she shares how embarrassed she was for much of her early and mid-adult life at having a white father and even lied to people so they wouldn't know - I'm sorry, but what?!?)

And the real icing on the cake, for me, is that she refers to her parents are "mommy" and "daddy" through the entire book, not just during her childhood memories, which is especially off putting in the audiobook which is read by the 70-year old author.

[queenofassassin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start by reminding you that I wasn’t born in the U.S. My knowledge of American history is still fairly narrow, and I’m constantly learning. If you feel the urge to judge my ignorance, I’d first like to ask how much Finnish history you know, then we can talk.

One thing I deeply appreciated is that Roberts kept the original interviews wording exactly as they were, reminding the reader of the time they were written instead of censoring or “cleaning up” her father’s words. Some of these interviews date back to the 1930s, and that honesty matters.

I loved reading about the origins of her parents. The book doesn’t shy away from the realities of race and discrimination.

The inclusion of photographs adds so much intimacy and texture. They make the story feel personal, lived-in, and deeply human, blurring the lines between race, genre, and memory in the best way.

What I loved most is how this book serves as a powerful testament to her parents while still making space for the author’s own perspective. It doesn’t rewrite history or soften the hard parts. It tells it as it was. Then layers in newer understanding, reflection, and lived experience.

This book truly has it all: love, family, race, history, and the courage to tell the truth without hiding from it. For me this had so much to offer. Thank you @onepub for sending me this ARC.

Recommended for nonfiction readers who are interested in mixed marriages, race, and U.S. history.

[Isaiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly engaging and thoughtfully written book that I genuinely enjoyed from start to finish. From the very first chapter, the story pulled me in with its strong sense of direction and well-crafted narrative.
One of the standout aspects for me was the character development. The characters felt real, with clear motivations and emotional depth that made it easy to connect with their journey. I found myself invested in their decisions and curious to see how everything would unfold.
The writing style was smooth and immersive, making it easy to stay engaged without feeling overwhelmed. I also appreciated how the author handled the themes throughout the bookvthey were presented in a way that felt natural and thought-provoking without being forced.
There were several moments that stood out and stayed with me even after I finished reading, which is always a sign of a memorable book. The pacing was consistent, and the story maintained my interest all the way to a satisfying conclusion.
Overall, this was a rewarding reading experience, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well-told and meaningful story. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.

[Sarah F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books and the author,Dorothy Roberts for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

In this memoir, Dorothy dives into a project that her father Bob was very passionate about and she intends to finish his work as she sifts through his research and interviews that explore the history of marriages of mixed races.

It’s astonishing how closed minded history has been to interracial marriages and coupling. I’m not surprised, but so disappointed in the history of racism and the bias that occurred and how much hatred was involved. I can’t say we are past this racism today but am hopeful the future will be more welcoming to mixed couples.

Some of this story hit especially hard as I’d just finished the book “The Keeper of the Lost Children” based in Germany where children were born of a WW2 when American soldiers got German women pregnant and the mixed race children were orphaned and left behind.

This book was informative, tragic, eye opening, and disturbing to see how mixed race couples were treated so poorly as well as their children.

[Cookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this memoir, Dorothy Roberts shares her experiences as a biracial person who grew up in a segregated Chicago in the 1960s. As an anthropologist, her father spent his entire adult life studying interracial marriages - specifically Black/White marriages. He spent decades interviewing and interacting with hundreds of men and women in Black/White marriages. His one goal was to publish a book about his findings, which he never was able to do before passing in 2004. Roberts intersperses stories and reflections of her experiences of having a White father and Black Jamaican mother with what she found in the notes and transcripts from her father's research decades after his death.

Roberts' portrayal of the research that her father did was fascinating. His was relentless pursuit OF collecting as much data over decades was impressive. She shared some of the interviews that her father conducted and it was interesting to deep dive into these personal narratives.

As Roberts discussed the research her father did, she reflected on her own experiences and identity as someone in a mixed marriage family. Even as someone who grew up discussing the topic in her home every day, she hadn't completely unpacked her own thoughts until she dove into those notes and transcripts. In many ways, her reflection juxtaposed with the research was very meta.

What I especially appreciated in this book was the context that Roberts provided for the times she grew up in. She discussed the segregation of Chicago and the history of interracial marriages that helped me understand how unique her upbringing was.

If you have a chance to listen to this book, I highly recommend it. It's narrated by Dorothy Roberts herself, and I always think it's a special treat to listen to a book narrated by the author.

I received a complimentary audiobook from Simon & Schuster Audio.

[Marisa TA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

The book felt like half an analysis of her father’s research and half her own deep analysis of her parents marriage. I found myself enjoying the research analysis of her father a little bit more as I got to read how black and white interracial marriages began and how they changed (or didn’t change) over time.

Because of my own interracial marriage in modern day and the result, my children, reading Dorothy’s experience being mixed and her admiration for her parents marriage made me joyful however some of her critiques of their marriage and her upbringing made me think how my own children will grow up, possibly have similar experiences, and ultimately wonder how they may analyze our own marriage as they get older.

I think it was the perfect dynamic of education/information and her own emotional experience. How cool it was to read how interracial marriages grew and developed in Chicago from the direct result of one of those marriages.

[Carol Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the hardest parts of interrogating history is measuring our perception of events, and the mass media narrative, against reality. To paint a clearer picture of the daily tensions of interracial marriage in the 1900s, Dorothy Roberts opens the door to her own home, drawing on analysis of her father's research — hundreds of interviews with mixed couples from the mid-1900s — and anecdotes from her own upbringing as a child of interracial marriage. She is unafraid to question the motives that drive the marriage mart, while also having a strong sense of security in the values that both of her parents have given her. I had always perceived my great-grandparents as living in a world that hated travel, stuck in the America First mentality, so it was eye-opening to see how much racism was a social and active choice.

[Joänna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another solid pick by Dorothy Roberts. It wasn't what I expected, but it was lovely. I treasured how the book 'finished' her father's work, but she didn't stray from critiquing it or adding her own nuance. I also love how the pages unfolded in order of how she read through her dad's pages chronologically, and she allowed us to learn about her father alongside her. The entire way I kept thinking "but what does Dorothy think?!?" and thankfully the epilogue finally addressed that burning question. As a Chicago social worker the stories really touched me and helped me better understand the neighborhoods... but I did feel some level of investigation journalism was missing. I expected follow up interviews with either the same people her dad spoke to, or the next generation. The absence of follow up felt like a minor let down. I wanted a full circle experience.

[elisa jackson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book to be disappointing. Dorothy Roberts has written other texts that were scholarly, scientific, and logical. This book wasn't those things.
The chapter written about her childhood neighborhood made it seem like if nonwhite people could just marry a white person, maybe our lives could be like fairy tales, too. Also, why does a person of her age refer to her parents as "Mommy" and "Daddy"? It's weird.
Her white father goes around interviewing couples that are made up of one white person and one black person. He does this for DECADES. And, that's it. He never writes a book. Nothing ever comes of it in his lifetime.
It seems obvious that even the author, her siblings, and their black mother were a part of this... "project". I'm not sure if this book had any constructive purpose. I would not recommend it to any nonwhite person.