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Shop nowWhere Did You Sleep Last Night?
A Personal History
Narrator
Carrington MacDuffie
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Length
6 hours 1 minute
Language
English
When Danzy Senna’s parents got married in 1968, they seemed poised to defy history. A white woman with a blue-blood Bostonian lineage and a black man raised by a struggling single mother, these two beautiful young American writers were boldly challenging long-held racial biases. When their marriage violently disintegrated eight years later, it was all the more heartrending given the hopeful symbolism of their union.
Decades later, Senna looks back at her parents’ divorce and their wildly opposing backgrounds and discovers two remarkable American histories. Digging deeper, she reconstructs a long-buried family mystery that illuminates her own childhood, her enigmatic father, the power and failure of her parents’ union, and finally, the forces of history.
DANZY SENNA's first novel, the bestselling Caucasia, won the Stephen Crane Award for Best New Fiction and the American Library Association's Alex Award, was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was translated into close to a dozen languages. A recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, Senna is also the author of the novel Symptomatic, the memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, and the story collection You Are Free. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist Percival Everett, and their sons.
Carrington MacDuffie is a recording artist and spoken-word performer whose voice acting has been featured in several independent films. Following a lengthy run with a New York vaudeville revue, she spent many years singing, writing, and producing multimedia performances with her seven-piece pop band. Her one-woman spoken-word show, On the Dreaming Earth, has been staged at various venues in Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest. MacDuffie has received several of AudioFile’s Earphones awards, and KLIATT says, “MacDuffie’s reading is amazing.”
Reviews
“Danzy Senna provides a moving example of how not to place blame but to use the past to illuminate the complexities of the present…Senna’s third work is less a moody j’accuse than a gripping detective story, one in which the author travels from New England to New York to the Deep South, following the trail of her father’s upbringing in a quixotic effort to understand her own…The story of her unhappy family, she realizes, is also the story of a nation, one equally fractured but full of possibility.”
“A haunting, introspective meditation on race and family ties that tackles the tricky questions involved in constructing identity.”
“MacDuffie’s tones subtly change as she speaks in Senna’s childlike voice, which matures as events progress in this memoir. MacDuffie’s voice is assertive and compelling as she convincingly reflects Senna’s fervent drive to uncover her extraordinarily complicated family history as the offspring of a Caucasian mother and African American father.”
“Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History is a completely different exploration of personal identity…wherein the very nature and definition of family are called into question. Ultimately, her search leads to a reframing of identity for four generations, including her infant son, and the exposure of a complex middle ground of meaning, far from black and white.”
“Senna squarely confronts the issues of race and ethnic identity in American history…Quietly reflective and gorgeously written.”
“[An] interesting memoir…While race and identity provide a backdrop to her story, much of what Senna experienced has been experienced by all children of divorce…Carrington MacDuffie provides a clear, precise narration.”
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