On October 25, 2023 Dionne Ford, author of the memoir Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing (2023), answered questions from participants of the Linked Descendants’ Writers Gathering. Watch the video using the link below. Go Back and Get It is a gripping and compelling story of Dionne’s personal journey of healing from loss, addiction, and intergenerational trauma interwoven with the search for her ancestors, Black and white. Dionne was generous in sharing details about her craft and discipline of writing, and how to tell deeply personal stories with grace, humility, kindness, and love.
Dionne’s great-great-grandmother, Tempy Burton (center), with her former enslavers, Col. W.R. and Elizabeth Stuart. The girls may be two of the children Burton had with the colonel. (Photo courtesy of the Renee Smith Collection, McCain Archives, University of Southern Mississippi)
Dionne began by describing her entry point – the mystery of stumbling upon a photograph of her second-great grandmother Tempy Burton, a Black woman posing with two of her biracial children, the white man who enslaved her and fathered them, and his wife. Once she began her research journey, Dionne kept a purple binder close at hand in which to save documents and information and note her reactions and feelings as they arose along the way. Writing longhand kept her connected to the page, and index cards helped with thematic organization. Many feet of parchment paper, unspooled around her study, allowed her to keep track of numerous interrelated ancestors and a timeline, which spanned well over a century.
Dionne also addressed the hard questions. Can fictional techniques be used in a memoir to imagine a fuller picture than the documents reveal? When do you share a book with your family who might object to the inclusion of family secrets? How does one decide what to make public about a family’s story and what not to publish?
Watch the video of our conversation with Dionne by clicking here.
Dionne Ford
Today Dionne maintains a morning writing routine, is a member of a writing group, loves immersive writers’ retreats, and keeps close to her religious and recovery communities. You can learn more about Dionne and her writing here. Links to order Go Back and Get It can be found here. It’s also available as an audiobook.
Listen to Dionne’s interview on NPR’s Book of the Day here.
Dionne is a BitterSweet Original Storyteller, read more here and here. Her first blog capturing her research journey was called Finding Josephine, and these older posts (up to January 2011) can be found here.
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