We Are Bridges

About We Are Bridges

FROM FEMINIST PRESS

Lane’s memoir weaves the story of her great-grandfather’s lynching with her experience of becoming a mother, attempting to unearth the lives of her ancestors and provide her child with a family record. The book will be published by the Feminist Press in the summer of 2021.

ADVANCED PRAISE FOR WE ARE BRIDGES

“A groundbreaking, lyrical patchwork of historical research, imagined pasts and futures, and personal narrative. Many will feel this book in their cells and bones.”  

—KAELYN RICH, executive director, Bitch Media

 “Lane boldly investigates the connections between transgenerational trauma, personal love, and the burden of memory. Her heartfelt memoir will stay with you.”
 
—YZ CHIN, author of Though I Get Home  

“With stunning prose, beautiful imagery, and raw honesty, Cassandra Lane takes us inside her family’s Southern Black history, including the unconscionable lynching of her great-grandfather.

That tale is juxtaposed against her current-day life in Los Angeles and her decision to have a child, which she’d swore she’d never do.  The narrative is like a series of nesting dolls, in which one story begets another and is in turn shaped and colored by the other.

In pages lyric and evocative, Lane paints a world in which the agonies experienced by earlier generations continue down to the current day, and yet, in the act of creation and empathy, she brings readers and her family both into a realm of not quite forgiveness, but reluctant acceptance and awe.”

— BERNADETTE MURPHY, author of Harley and Me

About Cassandra Lane

ABOUT CASSANDRA LANE

Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA.   Her stories have appeared in the New York Times's Conception series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. She is managing editor of L.A. Parent magazine and formerly served on the board of the AROHO Foundation.

IN HER OWN WORDS

For all these years, I have been studying and honing my craft, working as a journalist and editor ushering in other people's stories, teaching others how to write and read deeply, all things I've loved. Now, I feel myself emerging from behind the veil. There are stories that I was born to tell, and I am now fully invested in owning this and stepping into it.

I grew up poor in the South, but rich in experience. The land, the people, the dialects, the stories, the spirituality -- all of that influenced me deeply, helped mold me as a writer. I was able to go to college, study journalism, became the first Black and first woman editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper. I started a career in newspaper journalism after college, but my deepest dream was to write books, always.

I left my full-time newspaper reporting job in New Orleans just before the year 2000. I started freelancing for local and national publications while part of a powerful creative and cultural writing group. I moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to pursue the MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University. After graduating, I combined my love for writing and children and started teaching journalism, literature, and composition at high schools in Highland Park and South L.A.

I have also worked as a college applications advisor, senior writer for an education non-profit, community relations manager for the Dodgers, and am currently managing editor of L.A. Parent magazine. I’m excited to publish my first full-length book, We Are Bridges, with Feminist Press!