More Than I Imagined

Growing up in Baltimore, John Blake became something of a 'closeted biracial person': hostile toward white people, while hiding the truth of his mother's race. The son of a Black man and a white woman who met at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal, Blake knew this much about his mother: She vanished from his life not long after his birth, and her family rejected him because of his race. But at the age of seventeen, Blake had a surprise encounter with his mother that uncovered a disturbing family secret. This launched Blake on a quest to reconcile with his white family-a search for identity and a place to belong. 'More Than I Imagined' is Blake's propulsive true story about how racism hurts Black families and white families and how both need what Blake has coined 'radical integration.' Blake explains that this is a mutually transformative form of integration in which white people are challenged to adjust to the cultural norms of people of colour and share power along with resources. 'It's all of us creating a new world.... It's humbling, messy, and meandering.' It also challenges all of us to consider how an interracial community of faith can become a force for good, where, as Ephesians 3:20 says, 'God can do immeasurably more than we ask or even imagine.' 'More Than I Imagined' will draw readers into a place where they find for themselves the kind of personal change that sticks.