Happy Mother’s day to Inez Starr.

She was my grandmother but she actually raised me as her son up until the day she died in 1998, after I finished high school. Born in the late 1920s, in South Carolina, she lived in Jim Crow and worked the fields as a sharecropper until moving to Detroit in the 1950s. She would have five children there, in addition to the five she birthed in South Carolina.

My mom was in the army, so I stayed in Detroit, where she raised me. I never called her grandma. She was always mom. She taught me how to use a gas stove by the age of 7 and I was cooking full meals at 10. She also taught me to clean a house before I was a teenager. Of all of the people in my life, my mom was my biggest influence. I do not have many photos of her, but this is one of us when I was a small child during a family reunion in South Carolina.

I am very happy to have memories of Inez Starr, the most important person in my life during her lifetime.

Independent journalist, with coverage in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Focus on the intersection of race and foreign affairs.

Happy Mothers Day to yours mate!

In my home country we celebrated it last weekend ☺️