Robin Coste Lewis Collection - I See My Light Shining

Elders in this collection cite a variety of reasons for their move to California, with safety concerns being a common motivating factor. In her interview, Florene Marshell, a child of the Great Migration by way of Mississippi, reflects on her family’s decision to migrate to the Los Angeles area: “[B]ecause of the time of Emmett Till being killed, my mom was afraid that some harm would come to her daughters, or her sons may even have been hung at the time.” Similarly, Louisiana-born narrator Natalie Owens’ family came to LA after lynching threat was leveled against her father.

As discussed in the collection’s interviews, California was not immune to the racism that permeated the rest of the country. In Los Angeles, racially restrictive covenants throughout the mid-20th century legalized housing discrimination based on race, and communities of color faced white supremacist intimidation through bombing, mobs, and violent threats. Narrator Edra Widener, whose family fled the threat of violence in Louisiana, remembers a cross-burning in her family’s front yard in South Central LA in the 1940s. “I do remember it. In fact, my image of it is the shade—the sight of the fire, you know, behind the shade on the front lawn. That image, I've kept.… and my aunt screaming… those are the two things that I remember.”

Where racial covenants were ineffective, narrator Lynell George describes how new neighbors from Cuba, Costa Rica, India, Pakistan, and more began to arrive: “I won’t say there wasn’t tension. There was. It was not like a ‘we are the world’ kind of thing. But it did allow us to be with other people, learn other cultures, language, traditions, rituals. It was one of the most valuable experiences I had in that sense. I mean, it did put me in a global LA, which was happening, you know, like, in real time."

Many elders interviewed found a level of diversity and cultural fusion they had not experienced elsewhere. Owens reflects on the diversity of her upbringing; “We lived on Cypress Avenue in Pasadena. …Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, whites, and Blacks, we were all at the elementary school.” As did fourth-generation Japanese-American poet Garrett Hongo, saying “There was a Polish kid, two Japanese Americans, and a Black kid. And that's normal. That was normal.”

As many elders attest in their reflections, the distinctly multicultural upbringing they experienced in southern California shaped their tastes and ways of seeing. LA-raised writer and professor Dana Johnson reflects: "So being a Californian in the suburbs, I feel like, is a very different—it made me feel, in a good way, a kind of variety in terms of my own identity that I could not pin down."

"And so that makes you a weirdo to certain people who prescribe to a sort of essentialist Blackness that if you are a person who’s like, Oh, I actually claim a lot of different things in terms of the cultures I appreciate and the art that I appreciate and the music that I appreciate, that some people would give that a side-eye, but that’s just who I am." - Dana Johnson

Growing up in San Diego, renowned scholar strategist and author Alondra Nelson speaks of the cultural infusion and clash of living close to the US-Mexico border: “The experience of growing up in La Frontera was formative.[...] I sometimes will joke, but I'm mostly serious when I say I feel part Chicana. It is a formative thing for a Black person to grow up on the border like that.”

Black elders in this collection, such as Jan Bell, recall finding allies in other people of color at her school after tensions following the 1965 Watts riots: “I actually ended up befriending a young Indian girl, and she and I enjoyed going to the library, which I found was a safe place. I can go at lunchtime, and we could read and giggle and talk quietly, and no one would come and try to hurt us.”

Garret Hongo summarizes the lasting impact of the cultural fusion that people of color experienced in Southern California: “And, to me, that's still the default America that I gravitate to in my heart. I just feel it, and I always sort of try to cut across the segregations because, in a way, we were not fully integrated, but we were trying and we were young. And it felt good. It felt good. And that's still what I try to go back to, as I say, in my heart."

Elders in this collection compare their experiences with those of their parents, children, and grandchildren, reflecting on what they’ve learned and what they hope to pass on.

With deep conviction about the importance of passing on family history, Christine Kim offers: “[A]s immigrants, as people of color, as women, you know, the kind of idea of some sort of version of imposter syndrome where your story is deemed less important is kind of ingrained certainly growing up in this country with parents who didn't speak great English, and really kind of leaning towards just kind of keep your head down, don't make trouble, don't get deported, whatever, all these messages circulating in the community."

Also reflecting on her parents, Taura Musgrove, who is African American, compares her grandmother and mother’s relationships with their hair with a salient family story: "She’s witnessing the beginnings of Black Power Movement, and she’s growing. She’s evolving. She grew up with a mother with this long, heavy, wavy black hair, and my mother’s hair is beautiful and tightly, beautifully kinky, and my grandmother never liked my mother’s hair."

"It was hurtful to her. [...] [A]nd my grandfather says, “You look beautiful, honey.” Thank God my grandfather says to her, “You look beautiful, honey,” because my grandmother’s just shaking her head. But my mother’s craving some more freedom in her Blackness[...]"   - Taura Musgrove

Robert Williams, who was fired from his job due to racist management, describes how his family’s strength and brilliance inspired him to keep his head high: “Two of my great-grandfathers on my mother's side were physicians, and all of that gives one a sense of, I don't want to say equality or being equal to the next white person, but a sense of being worthy of having a foundation that is solid. When racism comes at you, you're standing on something firmer. Whatever you're coming at me with, my family disproves it.”

Edra Widener, reflecting on her own upbringing with the elders in her community, shares words of wisdom and their impact on her across her own life. She reflects:

"If you get an opportunity, you try your best to get somebody else an opportunity. We were taught that. And we were also taught, you know, the reality of you have to be the best at everything... You can't slack off. You've got to do the best that you can be. Not, you know, we don’t want you to, you know, hurt yourself, or nothing like that, but do the best that you can be, because there's people coming after you that you need to help along the way as well… Follow your spirit. Exactly. Exactly, exactly."