{"id":55110,"date":"2017-11-12T04:32:51","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T04:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55110"},"modified":"2017-11-12T04:32:51","modified_gmt":"2017-11-12T04:32:51","slug":"secret-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55110","title":{"rendered":"Secret heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Secret heritage<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Herald-Argus<\/a>
\nLa Porte, Indiana
\n2017-10-26<\/p>\n

Matt Christy<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Writer
\nTelephone: (219) 326-3870<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nSecret heritage<\/b>
\n“White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing<\/a>” is on book shelves now and available for check-out at the La Porte County Public Library<\/a>.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Author tells story behind new book<\/em><\/p>\n

Looks can be deceiving.<\/p>\n

To look at a photograph of Alvera Frederic Kalina, you wouldn\u2019t know the secret she was hiding. Hiding from her husband, hiding from her children, hiding from everyone but those she cut all ties to when she left her New Orleans roots far, far behind.<\/p>\n

Alvera avoided the sun. She had no photos of her family. She was obsessed with makeup, even wearing it when she slept.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t even imagine the fear she lived with, which I later understood was why she did (those mysterious things),\u201d said Alvera\u2019s daughter, author Gail Lukasik<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lukasik is a mystery writer, but her newest book \u201cWhite Like Her<\/a>\u201d is a mystery of another sort. Unlike the female driven detective novels Lukasik is known to pen, \u201cWhite Like Her\u201d tells the story of a true mystery, one Lukasik \u2014 not one of her fictional protagonists \u2014 unraveled. It was the mystery her mother made her swear to carry to her grave.<\/p>\n

It began with Lukasik wanting to know more about her mother\u2019s father, Azemar Frederic. She knew nothing of her grandfather and when asked, her mother would only say her parents divorced when she was young and her father didn\u2019t raise her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one time I asked her if we could visit New Orleans<\/a>, where she grew up, she said it would depress her to go home, so I let it go. But in the back of my mind I always wondered about Azemar Frederic. What did he look like? What did he do for a living? What kind of man was my grandfather?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The answers would shock her and would change everything she thought she knew…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author tells story behind new book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,369,8,6462,20],"tags":[27597,27595,25614,27598],"class_list":["post-55110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-alvera-frederic-kalina","tag-azemar-frederic","tag-gail-lukasik","tag-matt-christy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55113,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55110\/revisions\/55113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}