Shannon Luders-Manuel

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.