02770cam a2200325 i 4500 898566623 TxAuBib 20230816120000.0 230309s2023||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u bl2023011485 9781324091714 HRD 30.00 1324091711 HRD 30.00 TxAuBib rda Guterl, Matthew Pratt, 1970-, author. Skinfolk [BOOK] : a memoir / Matthew Pratt Guterl. First edition. New York, N.Y. : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2023] xx, 298 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Could a picturesque white house with a picket fence save the world? What if it was filled with children drawn together from around the globe? And what if, within the yard, the lines of kin and skin, of family and race, were deliberately knotted and twisted? In 1970, a wild-eyed dreamer, Bob Guterl, believed it could. Bob was determined to solve, in one stroke, the problems of overpopulation and racism. The charming, larger-than-life lawyer and his brilliant wife, Sheryl, a former homecoming queen, launched a radical experiment to raise their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called war zones of the American century. They moved to rural New Jersey with dreams of creating what Bob described as a new Noah’s ark, filled with “two of every race.” While the venture made for a great photograph, with the proverbial “casseroles and potato chips out for everyone,” the Brady Brunch façade began to crack once reality seeped into the yard, adding undue complexity to the ordinary drama of a big family. Matthew Pratt Guterl, one of the children, narrates a family saga of astonishing originality, in which even the best intentions would prove woefully inadequate. He takes us inside the clapboard house where Bob and Sheryl raised their makeshift brood in a nation riven then as now by virulent racism and xenophobia. Chronicling both the humor and pathos of this experiment, he “opens a door to our dreams of what the idea of family might make possible.” Provided by publisher. 20230816. Guterl, Matthew Pratt 1970- Family. Interracial adoption United States Case studies. Multiracial families United States Case studies. Multiracial families New Jersey Case studies. Case studies. United States Race relations.