Say I'm Dead

Starred review from May 1, 2020
In the spring of 1943, Ella Lewis fled her white Catholic family in Indianapolis to marry Henry Jackson, who was African American. Recognizing the ingrained racism in a state with an active KKK and laws against miscegenation, Ella decided the only way to protect her white family and the Black man she loved was to disappear, allowing her parents and sister to believe she had died. The ramifications of this decision are explored by Johnson, her daughter, who chronicles her parents' bittersweet love story and her own experiences with racism as she learns to accept her biracial heritage. Johnson powerfully describes the racial tension in mid-twentieth-century Indiana, where the slightest deviation from customary segregation could unleash unspeakable violence against Black men; and the terrifying experience of attempting to integrate a white community in 1970s Baton Rouge, where Johnson's colleagues tell blatantly racist jokes, and police treat a cross-burning with lackadaisical indifference. While Johnson sympathizes with her mother's decision to leave home, she candidly addresses the heartwrenching grief and despair Ella caused her family, especially her father who died mourning for his lost, wonderful girl. Yet as Johnson makes clear to her mother, It's America's disgrace, not yours, that you had to run and hide. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)