OUR HIDDEN CONVERSATION

Peabody Award-winning journalist Michele Norris offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America, unearthed through her decade-long work at The Race Card Project.

The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send. The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. The responses reveal fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor.

Our Hidden Conversation is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories.

Michele Norris is a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section and a former co-host of NPR's All Things Considered. Norris is also the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award-winning narrative archive where people around the world share their reflections on identity - in just six words. Her first book, The Grace of Silence, was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Kansas City Star.