Dolores Johnson tells us about suffering and joys of her bi-racial family in – Say, I’m Dead, a family memoir of race, secrets and love.
“Say I’m dead is a multi generational story of my family; who endured fear, secrets and separation and finally transformation; because they were not bound by the forbidding race mixing norms and laws in America.”
“The heart of the book is about my white mother and black father, who married secretly in 1943. They met in Indiana where their was an anti race mixing law. It was illegal to get married, punishable by seven years in prison for both the man and the woman.”
“What they did when they realized all these threats against their lives was they planed to run away and get married in New York State, where it was legal; and to do so my mom staged her own disappearance. ”
“And so that was my parents secret that I never knew, and my brothers never knew until we were in our thirties.”
“Say I’m dead is a multi generational story of my family; who endured fear, secrets and separation and finally transformation; because they were not bound by the forbidding race mixing norms and laws in America.”
“The heart of the book is about my white mother and black father, who married secretly in 1943. They met in Indiana where their was an anti race mixing law. It was illegal to get married, punishable by seven years in prison for both the man and the woman.”
“What they did when they realized all these threats against their lives was they planed to run away and get married in New York State, where it was legal; and to do so my mom staged her own disappearance. ”
“And so that was my parents secret that I never knew, and my brothers never knew until we were in our thirties.”
As a black person you kind of grow a shell, because there are so many ways that you can be slighted, abused, left out, not given access, mistreated, discouraged, ignored, hurt physically, mentally. You become alert to the fact that there is danger around you all the time. And that you must take care of yourself.
Mean while when our family is together, color is not our focus, Me and mine and millions of other mixed race families are going to keep on loving.
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