Long before I became a historian, I was a girl interested in the stories my family members told about their past. My grandparents retold our ancestors’ stories of escape and slavery, mingled with their own experiences as sharecroppers and entrepreneurs in a segregated society. My mother’s stories were of friendships in English, French, and Creole, of coming of age as an ex-pat black woman in France in the sixties. My father detailed his own migration from the deep south to Chicago, of life in the projects, and escape through Olympic weightlifting and a passion for science. The enduring power of narrative has shaped my own interest in history and the ways that we make sense of the world.
Writer, Storyteller, Historian
