In Between: Memoir of an Integration Baby
Mark Morrison-Reed was caught in a tortuous shift in America. Born on the South Side of Chicago during the 1949 in a twilight zone between the races, he was raised on the cusp of what was to come. A black hippie, he tried to reconcile the "make love not war" ethos of the white counter-culture with the demands of awakening black power consciousness. Morrison-Reed, himself of mixed-race ancestry, went on to marry an Anglo-Canadian and raise two multiracial children. He served as minister to predominantly white Unitarian Universalist congregations. In Between: Memoir of an Integration Baby gives voice to the unspoken story of those Afro-Americans who were among the first to bring racial diversity to their neighborhood, school, church or workplace, to the increasing number of partners in interracial relationships and those blessed with and yet struggling to raise multiracial children in a polarized world.
Praise for In Between
"This exquisitely written and psychologically penetrating
book will teach you, bother you and bring you to tears. Mark Morrison-Reed
has given us the gift of his heart in order to illumine the complexities of
race that haunt us all and, in the process, illuminated how fear
and brokenness may be redeemed by the healing, if painful, power of
authenticity."
—
William F. Schulz, President of the Unitarian Universalist
Association, 1985-93
"Morrison-Reed’s account is nothing less than a spiritual
clearing in the forest of race and ethnicity. Every reader will rejoice
that he has entrusted it to these pages."
—Lee Barker, President, Meadville Lombard
Theological School
"W. E. B. DuBois wrote of
the impossibility of disentangling the reality of African-Americans being at
once Africa's infants and America's children. This is what Mark
Morrison-Reed's new book In Between
is about. It is a difficult memoir, piercing in its honest suffering
and barely suppressed rage, but tempered by Morrison-Reed's seemingly
endless reservoir of warmth, tenderness and good humor. All of us have family
stories to tell but Mark's family stories, in their complexity, history,
accomplishment and influence are more fascinating than most."
—Denny Davidoff,
Moderator of the UUA, 1993-2001
Raised in the Unitarian Universalist faith, Mark Morrison-Reed served for 26 years in an interracial co-ministry with his wife in Rochester, New York and in Toronto. He is the author of Black Pioneers in a White Denomination and Been in the Storm So Long.
Last updated on Wednesday, June 3, 2009.
