I was twelve years old, and I’d never done Valentine’s Day before.

you had to do was denounce your people, denounce your history, and leave your darker-skinned friends and family behind.

That’s where the government came up with things like the pencil test. If you were applying to be white, the pencil went into your hair

I’ve never met my Swiss grandparents. I don’t know their names or anything about them

She didn’t have food or shoes or even a pair of underwear, but she had English. She could read and write.

I chose to have you because I wanted something to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return.

My childhood involved church, or some form of church, at least four nights a week. Tuesday night was the prayer meeting.

If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage.

My whole family is religious, but where my mother was Team Jesus all the way, my grandmother balanced her Christian faith with the traditional Xhosa beliefs she’d grown up with

Queen would walk next to me and act like she was my mother, and my mother would walk a few steps behind, like she was the maid working for the colored woman.

That’s how it was with a white man and a black woman. If a black man was caught having sex with a white woman, he’d be lucky if he wasn’t charged with rape.

Race-mixing proves that races can mix—and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.