Futureface
Alex Wagner grew up being asked what she was, the daughter of a mother who fled Burma and a father with European roots, and in this 2018 memoir she sets out to trace where her family actually came from. Part personal investigation and part reckoning with the idea of belonging, the book follows Wagner as she travels to Myanmar, sifts through genealogical records, and submits to the strange promises of consumer DNA testing. Along the way she questions the neat origin stories families pass down and the comfort people seek in claiming a fixed heritage. Wagner writes with a reporter's eye and a daughter's affection, weaving in the broader history of immigration and assimilation in America. The result is a thoughtful look at how identity gets built from memory, paperwork, science, and wishful thinking.
What you might want to know about Futureface
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A journalist with a Burmese mother and a Luxembourgish-Irish father digs into her tangled ancestry, testing the family stories she grew up with against records, DNA, and the messy truth.
Wagner finds that family origin stories are far messier than expected, and the book questions whether a tidy answer about belonging is even possible.
Futureface was written by Alex Wagner, published in 2018 by Random House Children's Books.
Futureface is 320 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Futureface takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Futureface is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.