Barbara Delinsky’s Family Tree: Race and the American Family

Abstract

It is known that racism affected black people and the minorities for centuries. Those people suffered the miseries of racial distinction without any hope to get rid from the torture of being different, poor, weak, and powerless. Above all, they suffered the pain of slavery and its humiliation at the hands of merciless masters. Barbara Delinsky (1945) is an American novelist. In her works, she handles the problems of the modern people who look like persons the readers know. Sometimes, the reader identifies himself with her characters. However, Delinsky presents the issue of racial prejudice in a different way in Family Tree (2007). She depicts the effect of racism upon the people who have honey white complexion. She narrates how a couple’s life is disturbed because of their newly born daughter who does not look like either of them.The present study sheds light upon the effect of racism upon the American family in contemporary time. It also deals with the author’s life and career as a contemporary novelist.