Susan Saulny

He made it clear that he did not want her to do that.

Yes, they were bonded by marriage and their cover stories.

Now, I don't know if they met in the South or amongst the many considerable number of white passing Creoles in Chicago, but they found each other somehow.

And they were both doing the same thing, passing as white.

And they didn't let their children know.

And when I thought about doing this story, I really wanted to go beyond just saying passing happened.

Because as a historical fact, we know that, right?

It's already been well documented.

What I wanted to do was show the psychological toll of that decision on Edward's line and on George's line.

And I thought if I could do that and to show the real lived experiences of an actual family, then maybe I'd be adding something to the conversation.

And someone might assume, oh, well, once Edward left, it was all sunshine and rainbows for him.

When he succeeded, it wasn't that way at all.

And there was a lot of trauma and stress in the family that got passed straight through his children, right to the grandchildren.

So when I think about who suffered in this story, everyone suffered.

Everyone suffered because of racism.

White or black, if you go back to my great-grandfather, everyone suffered because of racism.

And that's so sad.

She was quite a good gumbo cook, apparently.

And it stayed with him, the taste of that gumbo.

Long after she had passed away, he told me that he went from restaurant to restaurant looking for the taste of his mother's gumbo.