ABSTRACT
The author was born and raised in San Francisco, California; his mother was African American, Native American (with some European ancestry) and his father was Louisiana Creole—mostly European, with French, Spanish, Italian, and Irish ancestry, but also with Opelousa and Atakapa-Ishak Indigenous as well as West African ancestry. Some 15 years earlier before moving from rural southwest Louisiana and the heartland of the Creole community in Opelousas his grandparents sat his dad and his four siblings down and informed them that the family would be moving to San Francisco, California. In preparing them for the move they had the children watch the 1959 film Imitation of Life starring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore. The goal of showing his father, uncle, and aunts this film was to engrain in them the “dangers” of identifying as Black when they could “pass” for white.
