Just a quick post to let you know about some new pictures in the photo gallery. When Fade was first published, one close friend commented that she wished there had been some family photos in the book so she could see what my two multiracial-but-generally-black-identifying parents looked like.  Well, here they are!

The picture above is particularly special to me because it’s one of the rare photos of my mother, father, and me all together. I say rare because my parents split up when I was nine, and my dad died when I was 22. Most of the family pictures from the days before my parents separated are of my mother and me, taken by my father himself. We didn’t really do a lot of that “family portrait” stuff.

As I write in Fade, my parents made it clear that I had an interracial heritage on both sides of my family. But they identified as black due to the the social realities of their time and the prevalence of the “one-drop rule.” I say they were multiracial by birth, but black through life experience, whereas I’m multiracial by birth, and multiracial through life experience, too.

Anyway, the album is listed in the photo gallery as “Through the Years.” You’ll also find a baby picture or two, a fifth grade photo, a high school yearbook picture, along with some more recent snapshots. Feel free to have a look!