In this hybrid collection, the narrator wanders through her genealogical past, from the American Dust Bowl to Bandra, India, from Hoovervilles to the Arabian Sea. Her male ancestors hold important social positions: lawyer, Navy doctor, minister; roles that shape culture and history in official ways, while families shape it in private, personal ones, represented by her female ancestors. Alison Strub traces what is similar and what is different across two cultures: “This is all foreign, like the Madras ruby.// All things will drift away./ The dust I can’t keep out/will be the dust I can’t keep in.//Is there any place or time I won’t feel foreign.” Dust Rites interrogates the connections between family and global history, showing that everyone has a role to play, for good or ill, across centuries and decades.