Achieve Perfect Pacing

There's a fluttering sensation I get in my solar plexus when I stumble upon a trailblazing woman—someone whose role in our historical narrative has been marginalized, forgotten, or untold.

- SADEQA JOHNSON

It was while researching my fifth novel, The House of Eve, that I accidentally discovered a documentary film called Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story by Emmy Award-winning journalist Regina Griffin, featuring an unsung American heroine named Mabel Grammer.

The film revealed that during the U.S. occupation of Germany, thousands of biracial children were born to German women and Black American GIs. These children, called “Brown Babies,” were often abandoned to orphanages, unwanted by both countries. As I watched, I felt the unmistakable tug of a story begging to be told. It was a familiar calling that I both loved and dreaded. I had encountered the pull while walking the Richmond Slave Trail and felt the presence of Mary Lumpkin, the inspiration for Yellow Wife. And again, when my maternal grandmother's story of becoming pregnant out of wedlock in the 1950s inspired The House of Eve.