Emily Bernard grew up in a black family in Nashville, went to Yale for undergraduate and graduate degrees, became a professor in Vermont, married an Italian man, and adopted two daughters from Ethiopia. In her beautiful book of essays "Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine," Emily reflects upon this complex life of joys and sorrows, all the time exploring "blackness at its borders where it meets whiteness in fear and hope and anguish and love"
