This is Black History month and I find myself thinking of it a bit differently this year. A few months ago, I discovered that some of my great grandparents were enslaved Black folk whose descendants, due to White rape and White supremacy, later tried to pass for White people of Portuguese descent. As a trans woman, I certainly understand how “passing” is linked to survival, even when to do so is, in some sense, to participate in the very oppression defining one’s life.

In the past, I thought of BHM wholly in terms of being an ally; I never thought of it in terms of how Black history defined my own family’s history. So, today, for the first time during BHM, I’m thinking of my great grandmothers Nsaku, Prossa, Bunda, and Winona and great grandfathers Mihill, William, Edward, and Moses… especially since their lives —and even their very names— seem to have been erased from my own family’s lore.