Author Libby Copeland discusses how commercial DNA testing (for ancestry and family history research) is changing how we view our families and themselves. She is joined by Alice Plebuch, who made a startling discovery about her own family history through a run-of-the-mill DNA test. What if you, like Alice, uncover a secret that rewrites the script of your entire being? These two women will discus how to define family, race, and ethnicity, as well as how much DNA should get to tell us about who we are, as technology clashes with our intimate lives.
Check out Alice's story in The Washington Post here.
You can purchase The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are through our local bookseller, Eight Cousins, or through Bookshop.org.
Libby Copeland is an award-winning journalist who has written for The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many other publications. Copeland was a reporter and editor at the Post for eleven years, has been a media fellow and guest lecturer, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.
Alice Plebuch [pronounced Play-BOO-k] was the third of Jim and Alice Collins’ seven children. Her earliest years were spent traveling the world as an “Army Brat”. The family eventually settled in California. After graduate school, Alice married and accepted what supposed to be a short-term clerk assignment at a campus of the University of California. She leveraged her analytical training and was quickly moved up the ranks. She retired from the University as an Information Systems Manager. In her 50’s, Alice found an interest in genealogy. Researching her mother’s family was rewarding, but her father’s ancestry was murky, at best.
In partnership with the Falmouth Jewish Congregation, Worcester JCC and Jewish Book Council.