Allow me to tell you why I wrote this story. The story takes place during a troubling period in America's ever-evolving human ecosystem and shows how humans can adapt and thrive under the most egregious and inhumane conditions.

This story took place before I was born. I was born much later in Miami, Florida, during the 1950s. This story is being told to depict how personal problems, however difficult and whomever is to blame, are solved individually.

Collectively, humans help each other to learn and grow; some are better than others; but we are all interconnected. We need one another; like it or not. Therefore, our complicated human ecosystem, just as the terrestrial, lentic, and lotic ecosystems, is an interactive, behavioral codependency that shapes who we are and who we become. It contains biotic (living people) as well as abiotic (no longer living people) who influence us. However, after all is said and done, we must individually decide and choose our "what now" or "where to" from here - our life choices. If we leave it to chance, chances are we will not like the outcome.

This story follows the journey of one child, a descendant of an African American slave family. The Black American child, born post-slavery, was the first in the family to be born free. The child allegedly adopts and adapts to White American values and behaviors. Hence the pejorative Ohreo, meaning "Black on the outside and White on the inside". From childhood to adulthood, the protagonist's life, as well as, the lives of her descendants are riddled with socially questionable and difficult choices.

Literary works that inspired this story are: The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling, Gutsy Women by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Know My Name by Chanel Miller, The Measure of Our Lives by Toni Morrison, and The Second Sex by Simone de' Beauvoir.

Ordinary women, extraordinary lives.