Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Safety Rating: As safe as family stories get.
Friendly Rating: All but the youngest viewers should like it.
Quality Rating: Excellent
On PBS at 8 p.m., but check your local listings. Four-part series, Wednesdays through March 3.
This is a show about families and for families. Gates, whose earlier short series African American Lives brought history to life looking at the family histories of various prominent African Americans, broadens his search looking at prominent men and women of all races and backgrounds, including cellist Yo Yo Ma, Olympic skater Kristi Yamaguchi, political commentator and comedian Stephen Colbert, director Mike Nichols and others.
The search starts with the present and moves backward through the generations as Gates not only reveals what he’s found to the individuals, but shows a little bit about how he found it and how what happened relates to the history we read about. He even turns to genetics and DNA to get to the roots of where we come from.
As Gates says in the narration, “Sometimes when we read about the great events of history, we forget that history was lived by our very own ancestors.” Which is one reason why this show is so important – by looking at all these rich stories from all these very different people, we can see our common heritage in its glory and its infamy.
The other reason is something Gates does quite frequently as he talks with his subjects – he asks do you remember so-and-so telling you these stories or anything about these events? Our family history is kept alive by the stories we tell our children. And the stories they hear from their grandparents – some of which need editing until the kids are older. For example, I was in my later 30s when I found out that my grandmother, um, had to marry her first husband. And I only recently found out that one of my great uncles on the other side of the family was, well, if not a con man, durned close.
The series and the PBS show website will provide information on how to do your own family history research. I’d also like to plug a website belonging to a friend of mine, Susan Kitchens, Family Oral History Using Digital Tools. It’s got lots of practical information on getting some of these stories into permanent form from our relatives while we still have them. One of my most treasured possessions is a tape I have of my grandmother telling me how she and her first husband got together.
So let the show inspire you and your family to do some digging. What you find might not be as pretty as you’d like, but it will certainly be interesting.
