An award-winning journalist tells the story of his quest to reconcile
with his white mother and the family he'd never met--and how faith
brought them all together.
"A compelling and courageous journey that bears witness to the
realities of systemic racism, the complexity of identity within that
system, and the possibilities of reconciliation."--Robin DiAngelo, New
York Times bestselling author of White Fragility
John Blake grew up in a notorious Black neighborhood in inner-city
Baltimore that became the setting for the HBO series The Wire. There
he became a self-described "closeted biracial person," hostile toward
white people while hiding the truth of his mother's race. The son of a
Black man and a white woman who met when interracial marriage was still
illegal, Blake knew this much about his mother: She vanished from his
life not long after his birth, and her family rejected him because of
his race.
But at the age of seventeen, Blake had a surprise encounter that
uncovered a disturbing family secret. This launched him on a quest to
reconcile with his white family. His search centered on two questions:
"Where is my mother?" and "Where do I belong?" More Than I Imagined is
Blake's propulsive true story about how he answered those questions with
the help of an interracial church, a loving caregiver's sacrifice, and
an inexplicable childhood encounter that taught him the importance of
forgiveness.
Blake covered some of the biggest stories about race in America for
twenty-five years before realizing that "facts don't change people,
relationships do." He owes this discovery to "radical integration,"
which was the only way forward for him and his family--and is the only
way forward for America as a multiracial democracy. More Than I
Imagined is a hopeful story for our difficult times.
