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Say I'm Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love Hardcover – June 2, 2020

by E. Dolores Johnson (Author)

4.7 225 ratings

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"With unflinching honesty, E. Dolores Johnson shares an enthralling story of identity, independence, family, and love. This timely and beautifully written memoir ends on a complicated yet hopeful note, something we need in this time of racial strife." —De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills

Say I’m Dead is the true story of family secrets, separation, courage, and transformation through five generations of interracial relationships. Fearful of prison time—or lynching—for violating Indiana’s antimiscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson’s Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo, New York.

When Johnson was born, social norms and her government-issued birth certificate said she was Negro, nullifying her mother’s white blood in her identity. Later, as a Harvard-educated business executive feeling too far from her black roots, she searched her father’s black genealogy.

But in the process, Johnson suddenly realized that her mother’s whole white family was—and always had been—missing. When she began to pry, her mother’s 36-year-old secret spilled out.

Her mother had simply vanished from Indiana, evading an FBI and police search that had ended with the conclusion that she had been the victim of foul play.

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"Powerfully important and deeply moving, Say I’m Dead is a story of race, family, and identity. Dolores Johnson is the daughter of a black man and a white woman—but how and why it took her years to realize that, and to unearth the secrets that defined her family along the way, testifies to the complicated his-tory of race relations in America. Johnson lived the changes our country has gone through and continues to wrestle with, and her story will both inspire and educate.” —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir

“Say I’m Dead is not only a candid, compelling, and ultimately hopeful story of one woman’s quest to understand her family and herself through the lens of identity, it is also the story of an American identity riddled with secrets, lies, grievance, and thinly veiled shame. In telling her own alternately painful and exhilarating history, E. Dolores Johnson is subtly asking us all to turn the mirror on ourselves.” —Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men

"Say I’m Dead is a beautiful and probing family history of a woman’s deep secret: she left behind her White family in 1940s Indiana to marry a Black man in New York. Decades before the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case overturned anti-miscegenation laws, Ella and Charles affirmed Du Bois’s prescient theory that the problem of the twentieth century was indeed the problem of the color line. Their mixed-race daughter lives on the color line, a Black woman who comes to question her White background. This compelling story with related themes of race, class, education, and history furthers the exigent discussions of biraciality in the United States."
—Dr. Donavan L. Ramon, Kentucky State University, author of Betraying Their Colored Descent: Psychoanalysis and Racial Passing

"During the 1940s, it was better to disappear or die than break anti-miscegenation laws. When Dolores wants to search for her White mother’s estranged family, 'Say I’m dead,' is what her mother tells Dolores to say should she find them. The prose is clear, sharp, and insightful, and the writer’s quest to find the truth about her family is as gripping as any mystery. Through one family’s story, the memoir explores the tragedy of how racism divides us and also how one family moves beyond fear and bias. A must-read memoir for readers interested in a daughter’s courageous search for her history, which is inextricably intertwined with the story of race in America." ―Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing in Nonfiction

"With unflinching honesty, E. Dolores Johnson shares an enthralling story of identity, independence, family, and love. This timely and beautifully written memoir ends on a complicated yet hopeful note, something we need in this time of racial strife." —De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills

"With protests since the killing of George Floyd pushing the issue of racial justice to the fore, this timely book tells a Buffalo story with powerful appeal." —The Buffalo News

“Say I'm Dead is a compelling tale about the legacy of racism in America, family and the power of love.”—WBUR’s The ARTery

About the Author

E. Dolores Johnson’s writing focuses on the evolution of attitudes on interracial relationships through American history, with an eye to the accelerating browning of America’s future. She has written for Narratively, Buffalo News, Lunch Ticket, The Writer of Color Anthology: Boundaries and Borders and Pangyrus, among others. Johnson has consulted on diversity for universities, major corporations, and nonprofits and has served as a panelist for the Harvard Faculty Seminar on Inter-racialism.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lawrence Hill Books (June 2, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1641602740
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1641602747
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.14 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,064,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #882 in Dysfunctional Families (Books)
- #3,631 in Discrimination & Racism
- #31,263 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.7 225 ratings

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About E. Dolores Johnson

E. Dolores Johnson is the author of “Say I’m Dead”, a multigenerational memoir that shows America’s changing attitudes toward mixed race through the courageous journeys of the women in her family.

Dolores was born in Buffalo, NY. She earned degrees from Howard University and Harvard Graduate School of Business in Boston. After a career in tech, she took an MFA equivalent course to learn creative writing. Johnson is a published essayist focused on inter-racialism, and now her first book, “Say I’m Dead” will be published in June 2020.

Dolores lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website at edoloresjohnson.com or follow her on Twitter @elladolo and Instagram at edoloresjohnson

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Natalie

Beautifully written memoir about love, racism, and identity

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2020

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This is by far the best book I've read this year and one of the most well-written memoirs I've read of all time. It is written with so much care, authenticity, and vivid language that it takes the reader on a story of falling in love, living in constant danger, and teetering between identities as a biracial child many years before being biracial was "accepted" by most. E. Dolores Johnson paints pictures of two Indiana's, one that is full of beauty, tight-knit and homogeneous communities that live an honest life and raise their children in a white world with limited mixing with Black people. And another where Black people struggle to make an honest living and are regularly terrorized and sometimes lynched for being Black. And somehow, a white woman and a Black man find their way to each other and are able to fall in love, relocate to New Jersey, start a family and stay together through racism, being rejected by Black and white people alike, and having all odds against them.

Then E. Dolores paints the picture of growing up biracial and having situations where people mistake her for being white and speak with open disgust about Black people in front of her. The isolation of growing up in a family that predates the legality of interracial marriage is a huge burden to carry but she overcomes it anyway and thrives despite it all. It really opened my eyes to the experience of multiracial children and adults and the many challenges and frustrations they face in having to constantly explain or defend their identities, or be forced to choose a side.

I enthusiastically recommend this book, it gives a very personal take on the lived experience of racism in America and how love can be the strength one needs to overcome any obstacle or challenge.

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Marcy G

An important book for our times - and timeless too....

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020

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Dolores Johnson has written a remarkable book. It's framing narrative is the story of her black father and white mother who married in the 1940's against the laws and norms of the time. It is a story of love, trial, self discovery and redemption. Ms. Johnson's unique voice shows us what racism feels like behind the statistics and studies of "institutional racism". She uses the experiences of her family and her own story to illustrate the injustice and humiliation - and dangers - faced people simply because of their race. And she shows the damage caused by family secrets through the story of her mother who hid her marriage from her white family, and hid her white family from her own mixed race children. Ms. Johnson is clear minded and strong. Her need to understand her own history led to a journey to find her white family and ultimately to bring about the reconciliation of her mother with her lost birth family.

Ms. Johnson is no victim, and her account of racism is nuanced. She confronts the racism she experiences personally and demands respect. And she acknowledges the racist attitudes of blacks towards whites, as well as whites towards blacks. She also captures moments of redemption and hope -- white and black who could look beyond color and see humanity. The best example comes from her own white family, overjoyed to find that their long lost sister was not dead - but alive with family of her own.

This book has profound lessons of the damage of racism, and the diminution of all lives when people cannot see beyond the color on the surface of a face. Read it.

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knigalivrebukhseforlibro

Important and highly unusual story

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2020

This book is historically important. The narrator was born into a mixed-race family back when interracial marriage was illegal in many parts of the United States and could easily result in a lynching. Her white mother staged her own disappearance so as not bring trouble to her family by marrying a Black man and because she was sure they could not accept it. The author struggles honestly with issues of identity and race, and through her resolve and courage, she brings this story to a happy end.

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Janet W. Bennett, M.D.

A page-turner memoir so captivating I couldn't put it down.

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2020

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E. Dolores Johnson skillfully explores and exposes several aspects of inter-racial love, family secrets, and how being of dual racial heritage effected her and her family's interactions with both the Black and white communities. She details her parents' meeting and courtship in Indianapolis in the early 1940s when state law made such marriages criminal and punishable by 7 years in prison. The author creates sense of intrigue and suspense as she tells the story of how they fell in love and developed a relationship in complete secrecy. This reader felt a sense of great sadness for them and fear of the consequences should their clandestine relationship be discovered. Their decision to move to New York, a state where their marriage was possible and legal, but just as frowned upon, meant that Dolores' mother, Ella, made the sacrifice of completely fracturing her relationship with her family of origin, leaving them to believe that she had met with foul play and was probably dead--thus the title "Say I'm Dead" -- the advice Ella gave her daughter nearly four decades after fleeing Indiana should she find the family she left so long before.

It is terribly painful to observe how racism complicates the lives of all involved. Both the Black and white communities take issue with the very existence of this family. The vignettes of their struggles and rejections are poignantly penned with tremendous psychological insight and sensitivity. Dolores' decision to try to find and possibly connect with her mother's family of origin is a tale of courage and trepidation which requires a tremendous amount of self-reflection, self-revelation, and honesty.

Another perspective explored in this memoir is how a well educated and highly talented inter-racial woman navigates the corporate workplace/war field in America in the 1970s and throughout her career. She and her husband face daily challenges in the workplace, especially, but not exclusively, when work led them to the Deep South. Unsuspecting white colleagues assume she is white and make Black jokes and use racial slurs in her presence. Others who more accurately surmise her biracial heritage relate to her in many inappropriate ways, going so far in their intimidation as to include threats of physical harm. Finally, there is the issue of colorism--the belief by some Blacks that those of inter-racial heritage and lighter skin color are treated more fairly than their darker brethren--a type of light skin privilege which can create barriers and mistrust. Colorism has deep roots in plantation life and slavery.

At this time of heightened racial tension, health disparities between the races, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to increasing police violence toward people of color, this beautifully woven memoir is a must read for everyone seeking a better understand of race in America.

Janet Welch Bennett, MD

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