“You’re the prettiest, smartest girl in the world and nothing can change that,” my grandmother said as she hugged me. There was no other song I longed to hear or no melody that sounded so sweet.
In 1961, I turned six years old and my family moved from North Carolina to Okinawa, Japan. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing as we moved to a foreign country. I was oblivious to all the noises of race that surrounded me. What I did not know was that ethnicity touches you wherever you go and you cannot hide from it.