ROSEMARIE ROBOTHAM
Literary Alchemy

BELONGING

A Daughter's Search for Identity

Through Loss and Love

 

By Michelle Miller

Co-host of CBS Saturday Morning

With Rosemarie Robotham

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Harper Books/ HarperCollins

March 14, 2023

 

New York Times Bestseller 

 

"An outstanding debut ... Readers will be transfixed by Miller’s thought-provoking queries about race and family, and inspired by her candor. The result is an elegantly structured soul-soother."

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 

From Michelle Miller: "Rosemarie Robotham, through many months of sensitive and probing conversations, helped me excavate memories buried deep inside and bring them into the light. Rosemarie always managed to see the essential me. I am grateful for the love and empathy she brought to the writing of this memoir, and for her warmth, talent, and commitment in helping me tell my truth."

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Belonging is the chronicle of Michelle’s decades-long quest to connect with the woman who gave her life, to confront her past, and ultimately, to find her voice as a journalist, a wife, and a mother. Michelle traces the years spent trying to make sense of her mixed-race heritage and her place in white-dominated world. From the wealthy white schools she was bussed to integrate, to the newsrooms filled with white, largely male faces, she revisits the emotional turmoil of her formative years and how the enigma of her white mother—and her rejection of Michelle at birth— shaped her understanding of herself and her own Blackness.

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As she charts her personal journey, Michelle looks back on her decades on the ground reporting painful events, from the beating of Rodney King to the death of George Floyd, revealing how her struggle to understand her racial identity coincides with the nation’s own ongoing and imperfect racial reckoning. What emerges is an intimate family story about secrets—secrets we keep, secrets we share, and the secrets that make us who we are.