About the Book

As I stood in the middle of my elementary school classroom with tears streaming down my cheeks and all my hopes dashed, I thought my world had ended. “You want to be a lawyer?” my teacher railed as if that were the most ludicrous aspiration in the world. “What are you thinking?”

My teacher, an African American, most likely could not conceive of a woman becoming a lawyer—let alone a girl with my skin pigmentation—not to mention in the 1960s. He bought the script of the times, and he inflicted that ideology on me. That was my first exposure to color-consciousness. What a shock! I grew up with diversity ingrained in my DNA. We kids knew nothing of discrimination. We were who we were and never questioned why. We savored life and rejoiced in each other as part of the same community. We treated each other as family. But as I matured and felt my daughter’s sense of isolation and diminished self-worth, I began to witness the stark iniquities surrounding race and one’s so-called “place” in the world. 

Still, I held fast to my childhood ideals, living on “Camelot Hill,” Capitol Hill, D.C., where everything was possible. I wanted my daughter to have more than she ever dreamed — or I ever imagined for myself. I never wanted her to feel the humiliation of being told anything was out of her reach. My daughter could have been part of the president’s cabinet, a member of Congress, or the first woman anyone. But she chose to pigeonhole herself into categories that undermined her inherent value as a human being. 

When bright lights go down that path, the inevitable destination is an abyss of untruths and confusion.

I wrote Betting on Sunshine to clear the air for my granddaughter, a new generation who, standing on the shoulders of civil rights movement activists like my grandmother, Anna June, have the chance to seize unimaginable opportunities in a different world.

But is it? As we pause to reflect, we must remember that irrespective of age-old obstacles and traditions that tend to place people into illusory categories, there is always a new dawn as long as we, as the human race, acknowledge the beauty and grace of every moment and always bet on sunshine.