What do you love most about your memoir?

With The Trouble of Color complete, my husband will no longer question my habit of saving family mementos. He’d been the one to pack and repack them each time we moved! I’m joking, of course, because he has always been supportive, coming along on my research adventures. It is more accurate to say that I love how this book created a home for the photos, reminiscences, letters and souvenirs I’d collected. It is a practice begun as a small child, when my grandmother began mailing me keepsakes. I love how the book has given these things a purpose by letting them tell a new story about an American family, about who we call kin and how that can change across generations.

What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?

The Trouble of Color is for readers eager for a journey of discovery: of the self, of what it means to be family and how the color line has shaped us. If you have been misapprehended, mistaken or misunderstood for someone you are not, this book is for you. If the look of your very person confounds, confuses or provokes others, this book is for you. If you have been rebuffed, wounded or dismissed along the color line, this book is for you. If you’ve ever felt discomfort when checking a box, filling a blank or choosing a side, this book is for you. If you’ve heard that your family is too complicated, too out of bounds, confused or contradictory, this book is for you. For everyone, The Trouble of Color is an invitation to reflect deeply on their own family stories.

At what point did you know this story was a book?

I’ve collected family memories for a long time. But I only knew I might have enough for a book when I uncovered the story of my great-great-great grandmother, Nancy. She was born a slave in 1808 Danville, Kentucky, and no one in our family had spoken much about her. I stumbled onto the details of her life in the pages of some old, dusty account ledgers, and I could see how she was at the start of a book that stretched out across generations, all the way to me. I wrote The Trouble of Color with her portrait at my shoulder, hanging next to my desk, and always felt sure that Nancy would be pleased to know that I had put her and her descendants’ lives on the page.

If you have been rebuffed, wounded or dismissed along the color line, this book is for you.

What was the hardest memory to get on the page?

I knew I would have to confront my father’s life, including his troubled times. As a girl, I had heard his stories. But as a memoirist, I had to confront raw details: As a young man, more than once he’d barely escaped a tragic end. I wrote and rewrote those passages many times, wanting to be both honest and compassionate. I rooted for him, held my breath when he faltered and discovered that I could understand and even love him, despite his shortcomings. But to get there, I first had to face things that our family rarely talked about.

Was there anything that surprised you as you wrote?

I grew up thinking that my parents, who wed in 1957, were the first couple in our family to marry across the color line. They were not, I discovered. Long before couples like them tested their right to marry as part of the Civil Rights generation, men and women together defied so-called anti-miscegenation laws and legally wed. This was true 130 years earlier for my great-great grandparents, Elijah and Mary Jones. In 1827 they fooled a North Carolina county clerk long enough to get a license and say “I do,” even if the law barred him, a free man of color, from marrying her, a white woman. My parents were not outlaws—they were part of a family tradition.

How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page?

I feel like I’ve stepped into a new world. For two decades, my reading and writing life had been dominated by history and related scholarship. I love that work and the discoveries it has led me to. But historical writing does not very often invite us to put our imaginations, our dreams, our fears and ourselves on the page. Reading memoir has taught me a new way of thinking about the past and of explaining it in very personal terms. Writing memoir has given me the freedom to share not only what happened in the past. It has allowed me to discover how it feels to know that past and also live its inheritance. I feel excited for readers to know me in this new way.

How have you changed since you started writing it?

I found a new sense of humor while writing The Trouble of Color. I haven’t always found moments in which people misread me and my skin color to be funny. Mostly those were painful scenes. But I learned about my great-grandmother Fannie and her “passing” in downtown St. Louis. She was oftentimes amused when her skin fooled the eyes of department store clerks or train conductors. She shopped and traveled like a white woman when she chose to and, like many a trickster, enjoyed every moment of the farce. Only today, knowing Fannie better, am I also bemused by the misunderstanding that my color invites: People assume I am who I am not. Like Fannie did, I can now see the absurdity in that and laugh, at least to myself.

Read our starred review of ‘The Trouble of Color’ by Martha S. Jones.

What is the most interesting thing you had to research in order to write this book?

To write about my parents’ lives as suburban activists, I had to go back there, literally. When my memories failed, I returned to my hometown public library where they keep the only run of our weekly newspaper, the Port Washington News. Talk about going back in time: There I was, doing research in the place where, as a girl, I checked out books and studied after school. I was greeted by my junior high social studies teacher, now retired and a library volunteer, and spent days reading issue after issue, gingerly turning the brittle pages. I unearthed tidbits about my parents’ lives and more. I sometimes think there are stories for a next book about my own growing up waiting for me there.

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

The Trouble of Color is like a side of greens. Mine are made from improvisation and with love. There’s the sweetness of onions. Heat of pepper flakes. Savor of a smoked ham hock. Bitterness of greens: collards, mustard, chard and beet. Next, laborious prep. Rinse and soak the leaves. Repeat. Tear the tender parts from the stems. Keep the stringy bits for flavor. Magic happens when the greens hit the brew of stock, vinegar and hot sauce: wilting down to a thick, rich stew. Greens are great that first day, but let them sit. The jelly collects. The pot liquor thickens. They taste better than the day before. My greens are like family: contrasting ingredients, labor in the making, transformation in the cooking and always changing with goodness that lasts.

Discover more great memoirs this Memoir March.

What do you love most about your memoir?

By nature, I tend to think more about the future than the past. While I’m conscious of my own history and narrative, I usually spend most of my energy thinking about the cool things I’d like to do and what comes next. Writing this book with [co-author] Wendell Jamieson has been an incredible opportunity to carefully consider the amazing people who have shaped my life—family, friends, collaborators and mentors—and to appreciate the cumulative impact of their invaluable support and encouragement.

What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?

Connecting Dots offers a fun, interesting and exciting ride for two specific sets of readers. I try to normalize and offer insights about blindness for the total newcomer, someone who knows nothing about blind people and who wants to learn more, from basics like Braille and cane use to how we use computers and raise children. At the same time, it’s crafted for folks who do have a connection to blindness and are curious about my life and work: my time at NASA, developing accessible mapping software, crowdsourcing audio description for YouTube and so on. Either sighted or blind, student or teacher, child or parent, consumer or designer, I think my story includes enough nuance and depth to be appreciated from almost any perspective.

At what point did you know this story was a book?

For the past 25 years, my friends have been encouraging me to write this book. While flattering, I had a hard time believing that it would be sufficiently meaningful to devote the kind of time and effort I knew a project like this would take. I also questioned whether I had made enough progress in my career to be memoir-worthy. With the recognition of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2021, and Wendell’s generous offer of partnership in the project, these objections seemed to have been largely addressed, and I was forced to admit to myself that the time for a book had finally come.

“I have always worried that my violent and traumatic origin story is a distraction from the important work I want the world to know about.”

What was the hardest memory to get on the page?

For most of my professional life, I’ve been trying to direct attention to my work in disability and disability inclusion, and away from my personal origin story: how I became blind. I have always worried that my violent and traumatic origin story is a distraction from the important work I want the world to know about. While the story of Connecting Dots focuses emphatically on “the important stuff”—blind identity, cool accessible technologies, inclusive design and even the arc of my blind life—completeness required us to include the story of how I got burned as a little kid. It was a challenge to cover these events while being neither dismissive nor sensational or maudlin. Ultimately, I think we got it just right.

Was there anything that surprised you as you wrote?

One of the most delightful things that arose as we wrote was the strength and power of our collaboration. We kept our draft live in a Google doc, with Wendell drafting most sections from weekly interviews. I’d go in and edit, revise, trim and expand. Wendell would revise my revisions and I’d improve his updates. We were usually thrilled with the results. We would occasionally debate strenuously on one point or another, but always with respect and always ultimately finding a satisfactory resolution. Through this amazing partnership, I learned a lot about storytelling and I think Wendell learned a lot about disability, and he definitely learned a lot about me.

How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page?

In addition to feeling optimistic that we’ve told an interesting, funny and engaging story, I hope this book has a positive influence on lives and the world. My ultimate mission is to normalize blindness and disability, to help move us a little further along the road of everyday, reasonable expectations and opportunities for people with disabilities. I hope to offer an example (or counterexample) for young blind people, parents of blind kids and blind parents, educators, designers, engineers and other shapers of our more-accessible future.

How have you changed since you started writing it?

I honestly think I’ve learned many things since starting the Connecting Dots project, but have changed very little. If I’ve changed, it’s to become more patient, more understanding of difference, better able to communicate with people holding opinions different from my own. These are not changes brought by the writing process, but the slow progression of age and maturity. It’s been a long road.

Read our review of ‘Connecting Dots’ by Joshua A. Miele.

What is the most interesting thing you had to research in order to write this book?

Since Connecting Dots is a memoir, I had to do very little research; I consider myself a world expert on my own blind life. However, early in the writing, I constructed a simple timeline of my life that included dates and timespans for major life events, girlfriends, trips and places I lived. Most of it was easy, but reconstructing the early ’90s with a reasonable degree of accuracy was surprisingly difficult. Interestingly, there are also no photographs of me from this time period. Maybe it has a connection to the aliens that got the Mars Observer, or maybe it’s just a result of the college lifestyle I was living.

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

A robust and resilient blind life dressed in a lively, acidic and sweet disability-pride reduction, served with good and bad choices, mixed mature and immature romance, a sprig of accessible design and plenty of fresh Pacific oysters.

Author photo of Joshua A. Miele © Barbara Butkus.

Discover more great memoirs this Memoir March.

What do you love most about your memoir? 

I love most that Love, Rita captures who my sister was as a woman who battled a chronic illness, while also revealing her complexity and fullness; I love that this memoir is a microcosm of shared life experiences for so many Black women and men. I love that Love, Rita includes 22 letters that Rita wrote to me throughout the years, which stitch together the story of us as sisters. I especially love that the book includes family photos. Most of all, I love that writing this memoir allowed me to be in an active relationship again with my sister, as a way to better understand who she was to me, and who I am without her.

What kind of reader do you think will most appreciate or enjoy your book?

I hope that all types of readers will find their way to this book and enjoy it. That said, I do feel that readers who may most enjoy Love, Rita are those who like reading stories about individual people defined and shaped by familial dynamics, but also by living in a particular time and place, i.e., personal narratives anchored by social history and cultural context. In addition, anyone who has battled a chronic illness or loved someone who has, anyone who has some experience with inherited and lived trauma will, I hope, find value in this book. Finally, because the book explores multiple losses, anyone who has lost a loved one and suffered through grief and mourning will hopefully appreciate my book’s exploration of that experience.

Read our review of ‘Love, Rita’ by Bridgett M. Davis.

At what point did you know this story was a book?

On what would’ve been my sister’s 65th birthday, I wrote a letter to her, and in it I explored some of the milestones in her life. That’s when I realized she’d lived through so many cultural touchstones; her life’s events were resonant beyond their individual impact on her, but also more broadly as markers of Black life from the mid-to-late 20th century. That’s when I committed to writing this memoir, with two goals in mind: To honor my sister, and to highlight what America’s structural racism looks like through the lens of a personal, lived experience.

What was the hardest memory to get on the page?

The hardest memory to capture on the page was the one that follows my sister’s final months of life, after she loses her battle with lupus: the day she dies.

Was there anything that surprised you as you wrote?

As I wrote, I was surprised by how vivid and alive my sister felt to me again. I was surprised—even though it had been my goal—by how writing this story conjured her presence, made me feel close to her again, despite how long ago she died.

How do you feel now that you’ve put this story to the page?

I’m greatly relieved to have gotten this story—which for so long felt too hard to write, yet consumed my consciousness—out of me; I feel liberated from this family narrative and the parts that saddened me, yet surprisingly comforted by the parts that lifted my heart. Now that it lives on the page, I feel proud of myself for facing my fears and writing the hard parts. Having done so is a major personal and creative triumph.

As I wrote, I was surprised by how vivid and alive my sister felt to me again.

How have you changed since you started writing it?

When I began writing, I still held some guilt over not being able to save my sister. That guilt has subsided now that I’ve written the book, because I’ve gained invaluable understanding and perspective. I’ve now honored her life. Not only has research and combing through personal archives made that possible, so has mining my memory and speaking to many people who knew and loved her. Because I understand more fully what Rita meant to me, and how she influenced who I’ve become, I can honor those parts of her that live in me. That’s new.

What is the most interesting thing you had to research in order to write this book?

Because my sister attended Fisk University, I researched that particular historically Black college, which allowed me to learn about the institution’s fascinating history. I learned that not only did Nikki Giovanni and W.E.B. Du Bois graduate from Fisk, but the university has played a crucial role in Black and American history in myriad ways. Learning about Fisk’s story opened up a new, rich portal of Black culture for me.

Can you describe your book as an item on a menu?

Love, Rita is a delicious chicken shawarma with creamy garlic sauce. Not only was this one of my sister’s favorite meals at her favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in the Detroit area, La Shish, but it captures that combination of familiarity and comfort mixed with spiciness that embodied Rita’s personality. People love it. People loved her.

Photo of Bridgett M. Davis by Nina Subin.

Discover more great memoirs this Memoir March.