In the year 2015, she became a full time writer. Over the years the readers have proven them wrong. She self published “Yellow Crocus”, her debut novel, in the year 2011, after various agents told her repeatedly that nobody would want to read a story about the love between one enslaved black woman and her privileged white charge. For her fortieth birthday, she started the personal marathon of writing her very first novel. Even though she’d never written anything before, she was being called upon to tell this story.

She quickly started imagining certain characters and was haunted by them, with various scenes coming to mind. The idea came in the year 1998, when she was with a group that mentioned he identifies just as much as an Asian person as he does an African American. She believes she was part way through the third book when she really began feeling like she was a writer as opposed to somebody that wrote a book. Laila is so glad that the story waited for her to tell it. She resisted writing this novel for seven years because she did not believe she was a writer in any way whatsoever, and calls it her ‘Jonah’ moment. Laila first thought of her characters for “Yellow Crocus” when she was 33 years old. Laila identifies as a devout Unitarian Universalist, which is kind of like being a radical moderate, and worked at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland for five years as the Director of Children and Family Ministries. There are scenes in “Yellow Crocus” that were greatly influenced by the interactions with the kids she had from Woolsey.īeing a birth doula, she had the privilege of witnessing the joy and intensity of childbirth, which is also reflected in her writing. Her experiences and education as a parent and an educator provide her with ample for her writing, particularly her study of Attachment and multiculturalism. She had first hand experience of loving kids that were not her own while working there.

Laila Ibrahim grew up in Whittier, California right on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, before moving to Oakland so she could attend Mills College where she studied Child Development and Psychology.Īfter she got a Master’s Degree in Human Development, she realized that she wanted to do more hands on work with kids, and opened up a preschool of her own: Woolsey Children’s School, where she was director and founder.

Yellow crocus book review