Currently, I’m researching the life of a distant cousin, Shirley Greenblatt Patterson, who—fearing disapproval and disownment by her Jewish family—kept her marriage to Collins Patterson, an African-American, secret for twenty years (pictured). They married in 1952, just after the miscegenation laws were repealed in California, and faced discrimination in San Francisco, where they lived and loved. Despite all the hardship, on the headstone of their joint grave, it reads, “We Had It All.” I plan to tell their story, thanks in part to the help of a Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award.

It may seem odd that a Jewish, Stanford-educated, former PhD candidate from Orange County is a hip hop head, but I’ve been hooked on the stuff since Run-D.M.C. stormed the suburbs and knocked me off my tuchus in 5th grade. Coming soon: my hip hop memoir, the story of how the Pied Piper of hip hop led this white girl from the O.C. into adventures of dance and romance in the L.A. hip hop club scene.