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Love in a Black and Brown Time

In her debut memoir, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’, Nina Sharma explores her marriage to the Black poet Quincy Scott Jones.

Writer Nina Sharma and her husband, poet Quincy Scott Jones. / Instagram Photo

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Interracial marriage has long been a footnote in the Indian American story, going back to the early 20th century, when Punjabi farmers, the earliest settlers in the US, married Mexican women to get access to the land they were prohibited from buying outright.

Later in the century, young Indian American women growing up in predominantly White suburbia, looked to Black men to shed their cloak of invisibility demanded by the culture around them. Such relationships were mostly hidden: many states still had miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriages. And Indian American parents, even those who considered themselves progressive, drew the line at their daughters dating Black men.

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