Join us for a local author signing as part of our Signing Day Saturday series! We love our local authors and we have an amazing lineup for our winter series. If you see an author you’d like to meet, feel free to drop in at any point during their time slot to meet them and get your book signed!

West Bloomfield

1:30pm - 3:30pm - Dedria Humphries Barker, Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, A Colored Man’s Widow

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About Dedria Humphries Barker:

Dedria Humphries Barker is the author of MOTHER OF ORPHANS: THE TRUE AND CURIOUS STORY OF IRISH ALICE, A COLORED MAN'S WIDOW (New York: 2Leaf Press, 2020), a biography about four generations of women in her mixed-race family. A graduate of Wayne State University, her writing career began with The Michigan Chronicle, and continued with Gannett Co., Inc., daily newspapers in Michigan and Illinois. Among her many national readers, one on Salon.com accused her of lying because how could any person not know who Kim Kardashian was until the celeb married into her family?

About Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, A Colored Man’s Widow:

Mother of Orphans is the compelling true story of Alice, an Irish-American woman who defied rigid social structures to form a family with a black man in Ohio in 1899. Alice and her husband had three children together, but after his death in 1912, Alice mysteriously surrendered her children to an orphanage. One hundred years later, her great-grand daughter, Dedria Humphries Barker, went in search of the reasons behind this mysterious abandonment, hoping in the process to resolve aspects of her own conflicts with American racial segregation and conflict.

This book is the fruit of Barker’s quest. In it, she turns to memoir, biography, historical research, and photographs to unearth the fascinating history of a multiracial community in the Ohio River Valley during the early twentieth century. Barker tells this story from multiple vantage points, frequently switching among points of view to construct a fragmented and comprehensive perspective of the past intercut with glimpses of the present. The result is a haunting, introspective meditation on race and family ties. Part personal journey, part cultural biography, Mother of Orphans examines a little-known piece of this country’s past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage. In lyrical, evocative prose, this extraordinary book ultimately leaves us hopeful about the world as our children might see it.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9781940939780