Thank you for saying this.

I'm a passant-blanc Creole from New Orleans. My family thinks we're white. It even says so on my birth certificate. Yet I hear my distant grandmother's cries. Thank you for giving voice to Celia and so many others.

While I was growing up in mid-20th century New Orleans, a man's wife and children were his property by law and were treated as such. I don't know if this has changed. My mother, my sisters, and I had no privacy, no boundaries, and no rights. The expectation was that we would either marry and become stay-at-home housewives or join the convent. I seriously considered the latter but balked at the vow of obedience. On the other hand, my only brother -- firstborn male yet second-youngest in the family --was treated like a rising aristocrat. Everyone knew he could be whatever he wanted to be.

This harkens back to where Creoles came from. The men were young single men from the French and Spanish aristocracies, disinherited by primogeniture. The women were from the local Indigenous and African populations and, a little later on, from the workhouses and prisons across the pond. I feel it every day.

Thanks again for giving voice to Celia and so many of our grandmothers. The ancestors thank you and so do I.