Overview

“I’m still getting the brakes fixed and when that’s done I’m 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. I’ll call before I come down and, remember I’m Robert Conrad ‘Martin Luther King’ Manuel. The one who loves you . . .”

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 father—whose promises were rarely kept, who struggled with alcohol and violence, and whose love she desperately needed. How could she find a place among two worlds—one white and one Black—when 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 needed—she 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.
 

Reviews

“With brutal candor and one heartbreaking scene after another, Luders-Manuel writes with uncommon tenderness about the challenges of growing up a brown girl in a white world that still struggles to accept biracial Americans. . . . Her story adds valuable insight for any family who wants to know how to raise biracial kids in an America that still sees most people in the binary of Black or white.” —John Blake, author of More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew
 

“This tender, yearning debut gives us complexity and heart in equal measure. The One Who Loves You speaks to anyone who has ever fallen through the cracks of a school system, a family, or a life.” —Alia Volz, bestselling author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco

“The parent-child relationship is one of the most powerful bonds we’ll ever have, informing our sense of self and identity, but it’s also one of the most complicated. Shannon Luders-Manuel captures that tension with clarity and insight. As Shannon chronicles her journey growing up biracial, she takes the reader on a journey that gets right to the heart of what it means to love yourself and love your family. It’s a story that will at once move you and make you think—staying with you long after you read the last page.” —Melissa Blake, author of Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths About Disability

“In her beautiful debut memoir, Shannon Luders-Manuel examines identity, religion, and navigating complicated familial relationships with compassion and awareness. Luders-Manuel’s ability to write with such nuance is a testament to her skill as a writer.” —Erin Khar, author of Strung Out

“With The One Who Loves You, Shannon Luders-Manuel establishes herself as a literary luminary. . . . It’s a gripping, immensely genuine, and heartfelt story of a daughter and father who love each other, rising above any failings, frailties, and flaws. Luders-Manuel is a gifted writer with the most genuine heart I’ve felt beating on the page.” —Lauren DePino, New York Times essayist

“Luders-Manuel navigates her mixed-race upbringing with courage and grace, and she shares her stories generously. The One Who Loves You is an inspiring must-read for anyone who has ever questioned where they fit in.” —Nabil Ayers, author of My Life in the Sunshine

“The One Who Loves You is the brave and heartbreaking journey of a tender soul finding her way through faith, identity, and belonging, without much direction from the ones she loves. Luders-Manuel skillfully  unearths the nuances of generational trauma held within the confines of race, religion, gender, sexuality, and social class in the Western United States during the turn of the twenty-first century.” —Maya Washington, author of Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team That Changed the Game

Author Biography

Shannon Luders-Manuel’s writing has appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Real Simple, Essence, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. In 2015 she wrote the viral For Harriet essay “What It Means to Be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives.” Luders-Manuel holds an MA in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and performs sensitivity reads on Black and mixed-race characters for major publishers. She lives in Los Angeles.