Yellow Crocus (Ibrahim) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Whittier, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., Mills College
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California

In her own words:
I live in Berkeley California in a small co-housing community. I was born in Whittier California and moved to the Bay Area to go to Mills College where I studied psychology and human development. I went on to get a Master's Degree in human development with a special interest in attachment theory. br />
I owned my own preschool for 13 years. I sold it in 2007 in order to travel around the world with my kids when they were 12 and 15. It sounds more glamorous than it was because out goal was to expose them to the real lives of real people which meant that we mostly rented apartments, shopped in local stores and quickly learn how to find clean drinking water every where we went. When we returned from the trip I became a professional birth doula.

Writing Yellow Crocus was a labor of love. I resisted the call to write the novel for many, many years. In 1998, I was with a group of people talking about Tiger Woods. Someone mentioned that he identifies as much as an Asian person as an African-American person. I thought to myself, "Of course he does, his mother is Asian. You form your core identity in relationship to your primary caregivers. It's a basic part of the attachment process."

Then the image of Lisbeth, a white baby, breastfeeding in the loving arms of Mattie, an enslaved wetnurse came to me in a flash. I thought about what it would be like for Lisbeth to dearly love Mattie and then be taught by society that she wasn't a full person. I wondered how it would feel for Mattie to be forced to abandon Samuel, her own child, in the slave Quarters. Then I imagined what the experience would be like for Miss Anne, the birth mother, to have her own child twist away from her to get into Mattie's arms.

These characters started to haunt me. Various scenes popped into my head. Though I had never written anything, I was being called to tell this story. Finally, for my fortieth birthday, I began the personal marathon of writing my first novel. I hope you will come to love these characters as much as I have. (Visit the author's website.)