This week, SUNY Oswego students participating in the Living Writers course were presented with the unique opportunity to virtually meet with the published author, Shannon Luders-Manuel, over Zoom to discuss her new book “The One Who Loves You,” which was released earlier this year.

The book is a memoir which recounts the author’s childhood experiences in connection with her identity growing up as a biracial person in America.

The meeting started off strong, with Luders-Manuel explaining how she first decided upon becoming a writer at the age of seven, and how even at that age she understood that she had much more life to endure before she was ready to transfer her real life experiences to the page in a meaningful way.

Luders-Manuel mentioned that her memory “was not the best,” so the creation of this piece relied heavily on her own diary entries, artifacts and interviews with family members. The author then spoke about how the turning point for her decision to finally sit down and write this memoir occurred when she was unexpectedly made the caretaker of her estranged father, who was dying from lung cancer. Luders-Manuel then expressed how this situation ignited her strong desire “to preserve him” within the pages of her book.

This same sentiment was also applied to other members of her family, whose work made an appearance in her book. An excerpt from an essay her late grandmother had written says “it’s a hard year, one day you will be glad your heritage is just what it is.”

The author also included letters her father had written to her when she was a young girl to enhance each of her chapters. Several students were excited to help move the meeting along by reading excerpts from her book before discussions and questions took place.

The first reading was done by SUNY Oswego student, Mallory Howard, who read a powerful section of the first chapter of this memoir, which explained Luders-Manuel’s childhood realization of the existence of racial differences and biases through a series of immersive scenes.

The author explained how this snippet represented her desire to “show [her] family as multifaceted.” The last reading was completed by SUNY Oswego student, Kensia Chiron, who read an excerpt from chapter four which detailed a childhood scene where Luders-Manuel’s father was passed out drunk during her scheduled visit, and how that led to a traumatizing experience with a strange woman stripping off her clothes in front of the young girl while she tried to wake her father from his drunken stupor.

Luders-Manuel tearfully expressed how hearing this scene read aloud evoked strong feelings within her and informed the class that this part was “the hardest and easiest two pages to write.”

After the readings were completed, Chiron presented the author with a question regarding how she felt about her natural hair being styled “tightly” by her white mother versus being styled “freely” by her Black father. Luders-Manuel responded evenly by saying that she enjoyed both types of hairstyles and the effort that was put into her by both of her parents. Although the author did mention that she struggled with how her parent’s conflicting preferences of the styling of her hair differed so heavily.

The final question posed to the author was by SUNY Oswego student, Diamond Ramos, who asked how she balanced the authenticity of her childhood experience with the professional tone of her final publication. Luders-Manuel responded by explaining how “writer critique groups,” which were recommended to her by her literary agent, ended up becoming essential to her memoir writing process.