Skinfolk

A Memoir

By: Matthew Pratt Guterl

Narrated by: George Newbern

A haunting, poignant story of growing up in a mixed-race family in 1970s New Jersey, in the tradition of The Color of Water.

Magnanimous and charming, Bob Guterl knew that he could solve the racial problems bedeviling postwar America. Determined to stave off impending global catastrophe, the larger-than-life judge and his resolute wife, Sheryl, launched a radical experiment, raising their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called “war zones of the American century”―in a white clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town New Jersey. In lyrical, often searing prose, Matthew Guterl, a renowned historian of race and their third-eldest child, recounts the ultimately troubling story of his family; his racially diverse siblings; and his idealistic parents, with their miragelike dreams of creating a racial utopia in an otherwise all-white community. Chronicling the siblings’ coming-of-age in a recalcitrant, discriminatory society, Skinfolk peers behind that white picket fence, revealing many of the racial issues that continue to plague Americans today.

©2023 Matthew Pratt Guterl (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

A Must Read

“Skinfolk” is a must read (or listen) for anyone who is interested in learning about, understanding and improving race relations. It’s fascinating to hear how the
members of this multiracial family made their way in the world, how they protected each other (or failed to), and ultimately ended up somewhat fractured like many other families of all races.

Good stuff

Loved every bit of it very interesting story. I can’t wait for more I’ll be wait for the next book.

NYT recommendation

Touching memoir that covers familiar family dynamics while touching on the „race project“ initiated by the authors parents.

Insightful and personal

Takes you on a reflective personal journey into a deliberately constructed mixed race family and it’s profound lessons and implications from yesterday and for today.

Important story

This balanced and nuanced memoir is so heartbreaking exposing that even the best small scale, personal intentions and actions cannot break the debilitating cycle of racism.