Marcia Edwina Herman-Giddens
Award-winning Author
Marcia E. Herman-Giddens is an award-winning author of memoir, reparative genealogy, creative nonfiction, and short pieces she calls her Pensées. Her longer works explore racial and social justice, Southern history, the complexities of family, and the surprising discoveries — unexpected cousins, hidden ancestors — that DNA and genealogical research can reveal. She also occasionally writes on gardens and the natural world.
Future Releases
Marcia E. Herman-Giddens is currently working on a third book which involves a deeper look at her maternal ancestors' enslavement of African and, occasionally, Native American people, her many resultant mixed-race cousins, and an extensive chronicle on a local Black cousin's ancestors and their survival over three hundred years on this land. That work is revealing as much about herself as it is about her cousin.
Stay up to date with our latest releases and new blog posts, published every few months.
Unloose My Heart:
A Personal Reckoning With the Twisted Roots of My Southern Family Tree
"This book chronicles braided journeys and back stories of exploration and discovery, full of angst, sorrow, and joy, as it seeks a mending. It tells of uncanny traveling adventures full of synchronicities and unexpected discoveries. Some included learning about African American cousins who taught the author grace and love. It is the story of a girl, finding herself in the apartheid world of Jim Crow Birmingham, Alabama, at the age of six.
Her struggle to understand that world shadowed by her mother’s heritage of proud enslaving forbears lay fragmented until, near her ninth decade, she undertook the quest to find out what she did not know and record it for her beloved children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, for all her relations, and all others."
Awards
Adult Great Reads Selection for Alabama
2023 National Book Festival
The Library of Congress
Memoir Magazine
2023 Prize Winner
Moral Conflict Category
“Camping Alone.”
Carolina Woman Magazine
Won third prize in the 2026
Carolina Woman Writing Contest
Book Reviews
“
Unloose My Heart is an irreplaceable narrative that goes well beyond personal experience and the examination of the author’s maternal ancestors’ slaveholding. Woven into the book are many themes: coming of age, Southernness, the complexity and endurance of family relationships, class struggles, convention and rebellion, service to fellowman, empowerment of women, self-awareness, and civil rights activities in Jim Crow Birmingham. Its overarching subject, the evils of racism, which is sadly and rightfully dark, is brightened by the author’s sweet spirit, honesty, and hope for a better future.
Laurie Gentry, Recovering Troubadour, Journalist, and Designer
Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana
“
This book is more than a memoir set against the backdrop of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement; it is the work of a woman of conscience writing in the twenty-first century. Haunted by the past, her prose is a journey of exploration and discovery, full of angst, sorrow, and joy, as it seeks a mending. Her research unearthed an extensive history of slaveholding, arrogance, cruelty, trauma, and fear, forcing her to scrutinize the impact of this legacy in her life, as well as her debt to the enslaved people who suffered and were exploited at her ancestors’ hands. But she also discovers lost connections, new cousins and friends, and unexpected joys in the process, and, eventually, a measure of peace. With heartbreak, moments of grace, and an enduring sense of love, Unloose My Heart shines a light in the darkness and provides a model for a heartfelt reckoning with American history.
“
Unloose My Heart is a remarkable achievement of personal and historical journalism, a gripping account of how one young woman came to understand her family's debts in a segregated world and steps she took to settle them.
Jim Willse, former editor of The New York Daily News and reporter for The Southern Courier in the 1960s
New York
University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Unloose My Heart Author Bio
Marcia Edwina Herman-Giddens was born in Washington, DC, to a Pennsylvania father and a south Florida mother. In 1947, the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, arriving when the first bombings of African American establishments had begun. As Marcia grew up, she was profoundly affected by her exposure to the wrongs of Jim Crow, the ongoing atrocities, and pervasive injustice. Later, as a young mother, she and her then-husband participated in Birmingham’s Civil Rights Movement.
Herman-Giddens attended St John's College in Annapolis, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina, receiving her DrPH there in 1994. Just as the political climate of her childhood inspired her interest in racial justice and genealogy, her educational and life experiences fostered her love of books, nature, gardening, and the wide world of adventure. Dr. Herman-Giddens spent her career years in North Carolina, in the areas of medicine, public health, research, scientific writing, and advocacy, primarily involving children. Her scientific papers have been published in numerous medical journals and books.
More recently, Herman-Giddens has turned her research and writing skills to her family ancestral history. Her debut book, Unloose My Heart: A Personal Reckoning with the Twisted Roots of My Southern Family Tree, interweaves her experiences in Birmingham’s perilous apartheid world with an examination of her maternal ancestors’ slaveholding history.
She writes and gardens beside a canopy of trees outside her office window, and cherishes her large family, which now includes two great-grandchildren.
Published Writing
BOOKS
Herman-Giddens, ME.
Unloose My Heart: A Personal Reckoning with the Twisted Roots of my Southern Family Tree
University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL Jan 2023. Paperback edition published 2024.
Herman-Giddens, ME.
Sipping My Garden
Seed Pod Press, Pittsboro, NC 2012
SHORT PIECES
“One Little Road Trip.” Herman-Giddens ME. In: The TAF Omnibus Vol II.
Edited by Bice, AS. Triangle Association of Freelancers, Raleigh, NC 2023.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Robert McAlpin, and Simon Legree: The Natchitoches Parish Story That Will Not Go Away.” Herman-Giddens ME. Louisiana History, Fall 2024, Vol LXV, No. 4.
“Two Mason Jars.” Herman-Giddens ME. In: The TAF Omnibus Vol IV.
Edited by Bice, AS. Triangle Association of Freelancers, Raleigh, NC 2025.
“Possessions.” Herman-Giddens ME. In: The TAF Omnibus Vol IV.
Edited by Bice, AS. Triangle Association of Freelancers, Raleigh, NC 2025.
“What I Learned from Riding Birmingham’s Buses.” Herman-Giddens ME. Persimmon Tree: An Online Magazine of the Arts by Women Over Sixty. Issue 78. Spring 2026.
“Camping Alone.” Herman-Giddens ME. Carolina Woman Magazine. April 2026
