Shannon Luders-Manuel’s memoir, The One Who Loves You: A Memoir of Growing Up Biracial in a Black and White World, is a powerful reflection on identity, belonging, and resilience. Through vivid storytelling, Luders-Manuel explores the complexities of growing up between two racial identities, navigating family relationships, and recounts how she eventually became a born-again Christian. Luders-Manuel invites readers into her journey of self-discovery, offering a deeply personal and yet universally relatable narrative.

As a Puerto Rican who has also wrestled with questions of identity and belonging, I found her story profoundly moving. Like many others, my identity comes from a complex mix of unknown cultures. I was never taught to speak Spanish, which only deepened my struggle with understanding who I am and where I truly belong within my heritage. Luders-Manuel’s reflections on the intersection of race, faith, and self-acceptance resonated in a way that felt both intimate and thought-provoking. To delve deeper into these themes, I connected with Luders-Manuel through email, and we discussed her writing process, the emotions that propelled her memoir, and the impact she hopes her story will have on readers. 

Diamond Ramos: You paint vivid portraits of yourself and those around you in your memoir. Can you walk us through how you chose which experiences to highlight? What guided your decisions on which facets of your life to include in your story?

Shannon Luders-Manuel: I’m really drawn to the concept of liminal spaces: the in-between, the waiting room, the undefinable—those spaces that exist between what people perceive to be more concrete realities. I first highlighted areas when I felt most connected to family, to show my youngest self most at peace, and then after the inciting incident moved into exploring those liminal spaces: my otherness in my blended family, at school, at my white church, with my friend group, in my romantic pursuits, and in my penchant for an almost stubborn childlike innocence that insisted on seeing the world through a fanciful lens. Sometimes my otherness caused me discrimination, sometimes it was self-inflicted, and sometimes I found unexpected, restorative connection. I tried to make every scene relevant to my attempts to fill the void left by my largely absent father, even when the “me” in the book was not always aware of that intention.

Some of the experiences in the book are memories that have stayed with me for decades; others are important slices of life that I gleaned from my diaries as I wrote the book. Even others are memories from friends or family that had slipped from my own mind entirely. But they all speak either to my unique identity or to the universal quest for belonging.

DR: Your writing, much like David Sedaris’s, skillfully blends humor with keen observations of family and friendship dynamics, making personal experiences resonate on a universal level. What narrative techniques do you employ to create this sense of connection with a broader audience?

SLM: To compare me with David Sedaris is such an incredible honor because he’s one of my favorite authors and a master humorist. I wouldn’t have expected someone to put me in his camp because I don’t try to be a humor writer, though when I read excerpts at events, people laugh at lines I didn’t even intend to be funny. It’s a pleasant surprise that they are. I just write through the eyes of myself as a young person, and young people naturally see things through a ridiculous or literal lens sometimes. While our experiences may be different, the fact that our view of the world is limited at a young age isn’t.

DR: You reflect on your experiences growing up biracial in predominantly white spaces during the late ’80s and ’90s. How did these moments, particularly navigating the complexities of being between Black and white communities, shape your sense of self and your understanding of systemic racism and your place within both worlds?

SLM: When I was young, my place in the world was very confusing. I straddled so many different categories, including socioeconomic, and I didn’t have a broader understanding of history or world events to make sense of it all. In my book, I write that my dad taught me Black history in our limited visits by having me watch the PBS miniseries Eyes on the Prize. I liked learning about the past but didn’t understand its connection to current events. For instance, I mention the Rodney King riots and not understanding the significance of that moment. All I knew was that King had been under the influence and now, because of the riots, my youth group couldn’t make its yearly pilgrimage to Disneyland. Now, as an adult, I have the education and experience to understand systemic racism and the unique position of being both privileged and discriminated against at the same time, depending on whose company I’m in and what the context is. It’s another liminal space.

DR: At one point in the book, you reflect on your spiritual transformation, writing, “Now that I had given my life over to God, he replaced the void left by Punky going off the air and became the new figure I entreated. And a father figure, no less. It was like killing two birds with one stone.” How did your relationship with faith evolve and help you grow in the absence of a strong paternal presence in your life?

SLM: When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with the show Punky Brewster and silently talked to what I called a “Punky tree” that I passed under on my way home from school. Once I became involved in my friend’s large youth group in high school and became a born-again Christian, I suddenly had a father figure I could entreat at any time. God was set up to never fail me, even though I never physically saw him. My dad had continuously broken promises, but if a prayer went unanswered, it was because God was watching out for me. Under this feeling of security, my grades improved, and my self-esteem rose with the social dynamics I had never before experienced. Though as I moved deeper into evangelical Christianity, that sense of security grew more complicated.

DR: Your father’s psychological evaluation revealed both redacted and unredacted glimpses into his life, his struggles, and his aspirations. How did uncovering these documents shape your understanding of him, and did it bring you any sense of closure?

SLM: My dad’s pages-long psychological evaluation for his worker’s compensation lawsuit gave me a living document I could return to again and again. Knowing his penchant for painting himself in the most positive light, I couldn’t trust its complete veracity, but I better understood the man I visited: that as a child he had refused to stand up in front of the class and admit that he was “dumb,” that he had often wandered the streets looking for his father after he had abandoned the family, and that as a seventeen-year-old high school dropout in the army, my father had taken a test that revealed he had a high IQ. My dad sent me the redacted version in my early teens (devoid of his real age, his drinking, and his relationship with my mother), and I think I was too young to appreciate its contents; however, when I found the unredacted copy amongst his papers after his death, the contents became almost eulogistic.

DR: Writing this memoir required revisiting painful moments from your past, from your family dynamics to your struggles with racial identity. Did the process of writing help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your experiences, and did it bring you any sense of closure?

SLM: One thing I mention in the book, which came from my research for the book, was a realization about my father’s and my love for one another. In addition to making wild promises that he then broke, my father had a habit of calling to tell me what good he was doing in the community as a social justice worker, or plying me with questions about what I was doing to keep myself safe as a Black person (to which I had no answer), and then quickly hanging up the phone. Through revisiting his letters both to me and my mother, I realized his promises and self-accolades were perhaps a way to make himself worthy in my eyes, and that my fear of not being Black enough was of course a fear of not being worthy in his—when ultimately our love for one another was never in jeopardy.

DR: Both your grandmother and father used variations of the phrase "the one who loves you"—your grandmother affectionately called you “lover,” and your father signed his letter with those exact words. How did these two expressions of love, one constant and nurturing, the other distant and uncertain, shape your understanding of love and the title of your memoir?

SLM: When my editor and I were looking for a new title for the book, she suggested I go back through my dad’s letters, and that’s how I came upon “the one who loves you.” I use his actual letters to me in the book, in a sense letting him become another narrator, speaking directly to me, but also in a sense speaking to the reader. What’s interesting about that quote as well is what precedes it: “Remember, I’m Robert Conrad ‘Martin Luther King’ Manuel.” It reveals how he wanted me to view him—larger than life, heroic, and also with a clear excuse for his absence since my parents split when I was three: he was too busy saving the world. As I grow up, my view of my father changes, and I in a sense search for “the one who loves you” in that quintessential way, yet unique to my biracial identity in the ’90s South Bay.

Unlike with my father, my grandmother’s expressions of love for me were often verbal and given without much thought. “Lover” was a term of endearment much like “honey” or “sweetie.” My grandmother was my parent, more than my father or mother, which maybe wasn’t fair to my mother since she was always with me. But as we moved from place to place, Grandma’s house was the constant home, where I had lived from three to nine and then later as a young adult. “Lover” felt like her recognition that I was precious to her, that I was seen as “one who loves.”