I wanted to talk to people in private spaces.Īnd I started listening to the hidden conversation - not just in listening to other people talk about race, but I also started listening more to the hidden conversation in my own family. I just wanted to listen to it and to eavesdrop on the conversation in private spaces, not the one that you hear on cable television, not the one that you hear in front of microphones, even on NPR. I thought there was an interesting conversation about race taking place in the country in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential campaign and in the wake of the election of Barack Obama, and I wanted to swim in that conversation for awhile. MARTIN: Now before we talk about the book you actually wrote, tell us about the book that you intended to write.

MICHELE NORRIS: Michel, good to be here with you. Michele Norris is with us now from Chicago Public Radio. How much do you really know about their lives? Look around at your loved ones, especially the elders, the grandparents and the aunts and the uncles who used to give you shiny new quarters and unvarnished advice. And in that book, she asks: How well do you know the people who raised you? Look around your dining room table. That daughter is my colleague, Michele Norris, who co-hosts NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. The new book, 'The Grace of Silence,' explores a story hidden by one man, Belvin Norris, Jr., from his wife Betty and his daughter Michele. And yet untold stories remain a fixture of family life. Family secrets, it would seem, would be a thing of the past. In this tell-all age, where you can Google a prospective blind date or find your grandmother's birth certificate online, it seems downright old-fashioned to even think it possible to hide any major piece of information from your spouse, or especially your nosy kids.

The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris