While the Jefferson-Hemings story is a juicy one, The Hemingses of Monticello - as you might guess from its straight-laced title - is no breathless exposé. However, the circumstances that brought together Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings, makes having two dads or multiple sets of step-parents seem downright pedestrian. And, as a person who actually knows her ex-step-grandmother-in-law, I can safely say that things are complicated. We might think families became complicated in the’ 80s and ’90s, when the myth of the nuclear family exploded on the set of Jerry Springer. And the man is President of the United States. Oh, by the way, the white man owns the black woman as his slave, and she is his junior by decades. A man has children with a woman who is the half-sister of his dead wife.
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