Shannon Luders-Manuel

I entered society’s version of womanhood rather

Soon I’ll take the crèche out of the back of my closet and arrange it on my bookcase. Someday I hope to pass down the responsibility to my niece.

Like many Americans, I tried to keep close tabs on Floridian friends and family during Hurricane Irma. I clicked on a link that announced that a news crew had caught looters on tape and that the perpetrators had subsequently been arrested. The looters were black.

I have my own army who fights against injustice. I have a mother who handed out fliers boycotting grapes during Cesar Chavez’s unionizing efforts. I have an aunt and uncle who told me never to question the importance of affirmative action.

I’m a mixed-race, black and white Californian, and this was my first time in the South.

When This Is Us debuted, I was all in. What I didn’t expect is that it would touch my heartstrings in a way I hadn’t prepared for.

When her parents picked her up the next day, their eyes bored into ours with disgust. Not only was I black, but my otherwise white cousins were one-quarter Japanese. In my last memory of Brandy, she swam away from me in the unheated pool we shared with the high school next door.