History of mixed-race children orphaned in Germany after WWII inspires new novel by Sadeqa Johnson

When writer Sadeqa Johnson gets an idea for a story, the hairs stand on the back of her neck, and that's exactly what happened when she learned about Germany's Mischlingskinder, the thousands of biracial children with German mothers and Black American GI fathers born during and after World War II. JOHNSON: Never heard of her - and those are the stories that really, as you mentioned, get the hairs on my arms standing up because I see myself as the person who is supposed to go into these dark spaces of history and bring back these women, these ambitious women who have been footnotes, who have been marginalized, who have been erased, who have largely been forgotten. KWONG: I think that was one of the most moving parts of the book for me was - without giving too much away - when Ethel reflects on how she, the woman who, you know, helped these babies find homes, that she hadn't considered the perspective of the servicemen who, for one reason or another, lost touch with their children.

Author: Emily Kwong

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