SCENE: BALLSTON "MALL"-ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA (subtle shade thrown lol)

GUY

Excuse me miss, I noticed you on the bus. Where are you from?

(nervously) Um...Missouri.

GUY

No, I mean, where are your people from?

Arkansas. Well, my mother's side is. My father's side, I guess is from Missouri. (I later learned that they are in fact from Oklahoma and Missouri, maternal and paternal respectively)

GUY

(chuckles) No, I mean, where are your ancestors from?

Hmm...well, I don't really know.

GUY

Are you not Ethiopian?

Well, I mean, it's possible. (chuckles) I'm Black, and because of a little thing called slavery, I honestly have no idea.

GUY

(chuckles again) Well, either way, you're beautiful. You should look into researching your family history.

GUY WALKS AWAY. I STAND THERE. CONFUSED AND INSPIRED.

This will be the first of a few posts regarding "The Warmth of Other Suns." Yes, I know, I've had this book for two months and still haven't finished it. I have no excuses, just know that June was one heck of a month for me, and didn't have much time to read. Or write.

Instead of analyzing and discussing "The Warmth of Other Suns", I have decided to apply Isabel Wilkerson's outline to my maternal grandmother's story: Natalie (Thomas) Freemon. The dialogue I included above, was one of several encounters I had when I lived in the D.C. area. Coming from Missouri, I never got the "What are you?" question, but when I moved east, I seemed to get it frequently, and the people who would ask were overwhelmingly Ethiopian or Eritrean. It was then that I decided to put my research skills to good use so that I could finally answer that question.

What are you?

In order to answer that question, I need to know my family's history, and that is where my grandmother's migration story comes in. While this won't focus on ethnicity or race much, it will focus on my grandmother's (Granny, as I like to call her) experiences before, during, and after she migrated from Foreman, Arkansas to Kansas City, Missouri.