2026 Kentucky History Award Winner - Publications, University Press Category

In tracing her own and a nation's lines of blood, Sonya Lea takes readers on an intellectual and moral odyssey. With compelling prose, American Bloodlines clears a path homeward that is lit with loyalty and belonging.

--Emily Bingham, author of My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song

American Bloodlines is about more than Lea's ancestors and the past. It is a deep exploration of lynching culture and an intentional examination of the role white womanhood still plays in upholding racist structures that endanger the lives of Black people and other people of color.

--E. Gale Greenlee, former teacher-scholar in residence at the bell hooks center, Berea College

In this act of reckoning, this necessary labor, Sonya Lea faces violence directly--in all its bloody forms. Lea's admirable flow of research does not leave anyone she's affiliated with, whether by blood or heritage, to escape the attention of a fine-toothed anti-racist comb.

--Davis Shoulders, editor of Queer Communion: Religion in Appalachia

In American Bloodlines, Sonya Lea has done precisely what book-banners, DEI-phobes, and those who thrive on disinformation and ignorance do not want writers, readers, and--in general--Americans to do: interrogated her own family's past tinged with violent racism, stating, Here's what I know--we can ask for the entirety of our communal histories to be told. I want my descendants to know all that happened in our bloodline. If those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, if we are on a terrifyingly fast track to becoming a people doomed, then voices like Lea's, those who will not comply, who will not roll over into the comfortable privilege of denial but instead insist on history, are an essential part of our collective resistance and any hopes of--someday--our national salvation.

--Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason

Deeply personal and rigorously researched, American Bloodlines is both an interrogation of Sonya Lea's own whiteness and a lighthouse for others who may be nervous about taking on the same work. Lea argues boldly that the shame many of us harbor about our family histories and white privilege is actually a barrier to becoming anti-racist; only when we shed it can we have clear-eyed, compassionate conversations with ourselves about opposing 'the white supremacy that has formed us.' And it reads effortlessly, like an intellectual and moral adventure story.

--Kristi Coulter, author of Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

Sonya Lea has written a courageous, insightful, necessary book--part memoir, part American (and Canadian) history, part reflection on the nature of racism and on what is involved in the work of bringing it to an end.

--Priscilla Long, author of Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry

Sonya Lea has given us a master class in weaving research with family narrative. She has created a book about reckoning with personal and cultural legacies of whiteness, white supremacy, and lynch culture that is incisive, insightful, and brutally devastating. Though American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture is a call to radical action, it is also a call to radical love. The book itself is an act of compassion.

--Kelly Sundberg, author of The Answer Is in the Wound

In the urgent fight against historical amnesia, American Bloodlines does the heavy lifting. Sonya Lea's unflinching account of complicity in America's racial violence sets an example at a crucial time when this country--and, indeed, the rest of the world--must contemplate our acquiescence and our silences in the face of genocidal hate. American Bloodlines demonstrates that taking responsibility for past atrocities is an ethical obligation.

--Anna Badkhen, author of Bright Unbearable Reality

In American Bloodlines, Sonya Lea reveals how whiteness harms through an exhaustive, often vulnerable excavation of her privilege and learned racism. She illustrates the hatred animated in her ancestry with a courageous sobriety that emerges through countless interviews, poignant recollections, and meticulous research. The result is an engaging blueprint for the repair of self and one's community from an underexplored perspective. American Bloodlines is required reading for all those still uncertain about the murderous outcomes of white supremacy and for all those who yearn to heal.

--Irvin Weathersby Jr., author of In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space

American Bloodlines is an insightful, propulsive, and vital work of homecoming and reckoning. Sonya Lea masterfully models how to engage in the project of reconciliation, truth-telling, and grace that is so urgently needed in this moment. Reading this work felt like an outstretched hand--a generous offering toward a more just collective future.

--Garrett Bucks, author of The Right Kind of White: A Memoir

In American Bloodlines, Sonya Lea confronts America's history of racial terror and the enduring legacy of lynch culture. This searing and necessary book serves as an essential act of reckoning and remembrance, urging us to face the difficult truths that shape our past, present, and future with clarity and humility.

--Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckonings: Essays on Justice for the Twenty-First Century

This is a book about . . . the ways in which all of us must reckon with our own harmful behaviors if we want to create a more just world. Lea's journey and writing is an inspiration for those of us who may be scared to really see ourselves and our legacies; she shows readers that it's possible.

-- "Literary Hub"

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Pub date: 2025-10-07

Length: 200 pages