Rachel Jamison Webster‘s book Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family (Henry Holt, March 2023)—a book of creative nonfiction that explores ancestry, race, gender, and justice in American history – was chosen as a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker. It was also an Editor’s Pick by The New York Times and favorably reviewed there, as well as in NPR, Washington Post, and other outlets. The book was featured in The New York Times again in 2024 as a recommended read in “Paperback Row.” Her book was also a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize and the People’s Choice Award from the Library of Virginia.
“This book is a genuine quest to understand the personal and American history that I had never been taught. It is also an experiment in form. I wanted to create a literary form that upended individualism and showcased collaboration, that listened as much as it spoke, and that combined documentary and oral histories as it explored both the present and past,” said Webster, who is Professor of Instruction in the Department of English at Northwestern.
“[Webster’s] excellent and thought-provoking book is on every level about unknowing rather than knowing — about pondering the mysteries of Banneker, who is often described as one of the first African American scientists, and the legacy of 11 generations of a multiracial American family that only now is coming into view.”
—The New York Times
“I am so grateful to Weinberg College and to the Kaplan Humanities Institute, which supported me as I wrote the book–for the way they foster this kind of multi-disciplinary creativity and scholarship,” said Webster.
Booklist gave Benjamin Banneker and Us a starred review, writing, “Drawing on her acute sensitivity to language and bias, sharing long discussions with her cousins, and meshing their family history with the brutal realities of Banneker’s time, Webster has created an engrossing, multifaceted, profoundly thoughtful, and beautifully rendered inquiry that forms a clarifying lens on America’s ongoing struggles against racism and endemic injustice.” Publisher’s Weekly called the book “a stunning meditation on race, identity, and achievement.”
For 20 years, Webster has worked to diversify creative writing education and to celebrate and cultivate the experiences, creations, and genius of her diverse students, many of whom have gone on to write successful books. She thinks about the intersections between ethics and aesthetics, and she sees creative work as a way to preserve human interiority, complexity, compassion, and respect across cultures.
Two chapters of Webster’s book actually take place at Northwestern, and the book’s inquiries were shaped by her conversations with her students and colleagues.
“Even though I was writing about history, my experience in the classroom helped me to attune to what strands of history have special relevance in the present, and inspired me to ask pointed questions about denial, cultural appropriation, and our relationship to our ancestors. It also taught me to listen, to make listening a central part of my writing practice,” explained Webster.
Webster was awarded the Culture-Light Award from the Sri Chinmoy Foundation for both teaching and writing. The award recognizes those “igniting the creative spark that may serve an evolving humanity.”
She teaches creative nonfiction, poetry, literary ethics, cross-genre writing, meditative writing, and special topics classes like Writing Ancestry, Poetry and the Spiritual Search, and the capstone course for Creative Writing majors, Situation of Writing.
Rachel has also published four books of poetry and cross-genre writing, including, Mary is a River which was a finalist for the 2014 National Poetry Series; September; The Endless Unbegun; and The Sea Came Up & Drowned, which combines erasure poems and Rachel’s own collage artwork to meditate on our extractive economy and fractured relationship to the earth. Rachel’s poems and essays often appear in anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Tin House, The Yale Review and the Bettering American Poetry Anthology.