Desne A. Crossley: A Wallflower and Her Mother
Clueless about west coast Whiteness, for sure. For my anxious mother, this meant I needed her singular brand of watchful encouragement to grow into a whole person, a whole woman—and to be taught some street smarts for life in suburban Palo Alto with its unfamiliar patterns and pitfalls.
Desne A. Crossley: My Cousin’s Suicide
The first lesson in keeping secrets came in 1962, when I was eight.
Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across
Yesterday, I was culling through papers to throw out and came across a letter from my mother to her father. She’s trying to cushion the news that no one will tell him. He’s dying of cancer.
Desne A. Crossley: Rolling in the Aisle
In Nashville in 1950, my mother boarded a city bus. She didn’t go to the back. She didn’t act like her place was the outermost fringe of a world ruled by whites.
Desne A. Crossley: O Rosie Girl
it was one thing for a white man to bed a black woman, but unthinkable that he would marry her. And it was commonplace for a black woman to be forced to open her legs to her employer or his sons. But Martha married white and returned home with the man!
Desne A. Crossley: Transfer of Courage | 1968 & 1950
He was about to bear down hard on my thighs to force me open. With a loaded exhale of breath, I growled in his face like a mad animal and gouged his eyes with my prized fingernails, lacquered blood red. I dug them in along the hollows of his eyes, my hands like two steel vices, and held on.
