Once upon a time, when I was in my early 20s, I told a college professor that I was ready to write the memoir of my Mixed-race journey.
Fortunately, the brilliant Dr. Joye Hardiman put the brakes on my young ambition with words of wisdom: “You can’t write about something that you’re still experiencing and processing. You will write that book, but now is not the time. You’re not ready.”
Who knew that it would take nearly 40 years before I was ready?
I wrote my memoir, SWIRL GIRL: Coming of Race in the USA, at the insistence of my Ancestors (all of them: African American, Jewish, Blackfoot Sioux). By that time, I didn’t necessarily want to write it, but they convinced me that the world was finally ready for a Mixed-race identity journey that wasn’t mired in tragedy. And that I had enough lived experience and perspective to tell the tale.
I wanted SWIRL GIRL to offer a version of Mixedness that went beyond what Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously identified as “The Danger of a Single Story.”
When a major traditional publisher asked me to write it as fiction, I declined. And I found a wonderful independent Black publisher—the wonderful Donald Brooks Jones of Alchemy Media Publishing—who believed in SWIRL GIRL and helped birth it into the world.
I am deeply honored by how well this memoir has been received! The awesome support and great reviews made every minute of the 5 years it took to write this book worth every minute.
Imagine my thrill when my fellow Mixed-race memoirist and Seattle homette, Anne Liu Kellor, recently shouted out SWIRL GIRL on her socials … and called me a trailblazer!
By the way, DO check out Anne’s must-read Mixed memoir, Heart Radical: A Search for Love, Language and Belonging.
Here’s what folks are saying about SWIRL GIRL: