āIām still getting the brakes fixed and when thatās done Iām coming to see you, probably in a couple of weeks.
As I keep fixing this and that the car will finally become reliable from bumper to bumper and I can visit any time
and often. Iāll call before I come down and, remember Iām Robert Conrad āMartin Luther Kingā Manuel. The one
who loves you . . .ā
As a child, Shannon Luders-Manuel felt like an outsider in every environment she entered. Born to a Black
father and white mother who separated when she was three, Luders-Manuel grew up with her white extended
family, in largely white areas of California. Throughout her life, she yearned to understand her charismatic,
transient fatherāwhose promises were rarely kept, who struggled with alcohol and violence, and whose love
she desperately needed. How could she find a place among two worldsāone white and one Blackāwhen they
felt so different?
Luders-Manuel sought guidance in Baptist religion, becoming a born-again Christian at age fourteen, and
eventually found herself in an abusive relationship. When her father entered hospice care when
she was just twenty-four, she became his caretaker despite their long estrangement and hoped to find
connection while she still could. Instead, she learned that neither man nor God could give her the home
she neededāshe would have to build her own sense of self.
The One Who Loves You eloquently speaks not only to mixed-race individuals but to anyone who struggles with
being labeled by others and to those who seek to reconcile the most contradictory parts of their own identities.
