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arts & entertainment Book Review: ‘My Long Trip Home — A Family Memoir’ by Mark Whitaker By kam Williams Special to The Skanner News A s managing editor of CNN Worldwide, Mark Whit - aker is currently in charge of content and reporting for the world’s largest global television network. Previously, he made his- tory as Newsweek’s first African American editor-in-chief. To his credit, Whitaker has achieved his phenomenal, profes- sional success in spite of being raised in a very dysfunctional fam- ily by parents as different as night and day, literally and figuratively. His mother, Jeanne, was in her fourth year as a French professor at Swarthmore College when she found herself being pursued by one of her students, Syl. Since this was America in the 1950s, perhaps of more signifi- cance than their age difference was the fact that she was white, conventional and the daughter of devout Christian missionaries while he was black, immature, and a relatively-bohemian free-love advocate. Nonetheless, the unlike- ly couple secretly embarked on a torrid affair and wed just a couple of months after his graduation. Reflecting both a reporter’s painstaking attention to detail and a Prodigal Son’s sincere search for closure and redemption, “My Long Trip Home” is a riveting, revealing, and heartbreaking memoir affirming the potential of even the messiest of lives to blos- som belatedly into something sat- isfying and beautiful. 26 th annuaL News M aRtin L uthER K ing , J R . B R E a K fa S t Monday January 16, 2012 8:30-10:30 a.m. the oregon Convention Center, 777 nE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, oregon R Reserve a table: MLKBreakfast@theskanner.com R Call 503-285-5555 for more information A limited amount of non-profit tickets are available, first come first served Page 6 The Portland and Seattle Skanner November 16, 2011
