S15:Ep283 - The Mixed Marriage Project with Guest Dorothy Roberts + Amusement Park Book Recs

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button. You can find Dorothy Roberts at www.dorothyeroberts.com/ or you can find her on IG at @dorothyeroberts .   This week, we chat with Dorothy Roberts, the author of the book The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family.  As an esteemed professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and a social justice advocate, Dorothy Roberts has written many scholarly books and academic papers about reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics, but her most recent book is a much more personal one.  She is the child of a white father who was an anthropologist and a black Jamaican mother, both now deceased. When Dorothy’s sister gave her boxes of her father’s files, she began to read transcripts of research he had done on interracial marriage over a 60-year period. She had no idea how these files would affect her memories of her childhood, her parent’s marriage, and her own racial identity.  This book is a fascinating look at racial history in Chicago as well as a very touching memoir about a father/daughter bond.     And for our book recommendation segment of the show, we turn to one of the most iconic parts of an American summer. August is here, which means people are having their last hurrahs at amusement parks. With this in mind, we decided we would feature books about these places where people go to be entertained, eat overpriced food, and argue with their relatives. The books we’ve chosen are set in various amusement park venues, such as a western theme park in Arizona, an arcade park where reality disintegrates, a place called Dreamworld where everyone is happy, a real-life New Jersey amusement park that was certainly ride at your own risk, a North Carolina park that was the site of a murder mystery, and an amusement park set in the mind.     Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family by Dorothy E. Roberts  2- The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson  3- Martin Marten by Brian Doyle  4- The Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson  5- Jane Kenyon: The Making of a Poet by Dana Greene  6- The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and Obsession by Michael Finkel  7- The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel  8- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt  9- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Elizabeth S. @fireplacebookworm - Beartown by Frederik Backman 10- The Free Lunch by Spider Robinson  11- Krazyland by Mar Romance-Moore  12- The Insignificant Events in the Lives of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling  13- Joyland by Stephen King  14- Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill with Jake Rosen  15- Anxietyland by Gemma Correll    Media Mentioned:  1- The Odyssey (2026) 2- Emily Wilson review of the Odyssey - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man 3- Class Action Park (2020, HBO Max)