About Lula

Lula White is the pen name for Shannon Humphrey, me.

My grandma- who was also my best friend- often told me I naively viewed the world through rose-colored glasses. She was right. I've always had this uncanny ability to see only what I want to see, no matter where I am or what I'm going through.

With my outsized imagination and hunger for life, my grandma's backyard in Arkansas was never big enough. 

Though we had little, my family was big on fun, laughs, food, and music. What we lacked in financial means, we made up for with humor, music, television, and books. My grandmother and uncle loved to read, and constantly brought home encyclopedias, magazines and Jackie Collins novels that I snuck to read when they weren't around. Fictional worlds on television--Knots Landing, The Young and the Restless, Dallas, The Cosby Show, A Different World-- all nurtured my curiosity to see the world and conquer it. 

Magazines such as Essence and Ebony showed me what was possible for a Black woman. Books by Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins danced in my head, alongside more serious narratives such as Richard Wright's Native Son and Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. I loved stories of us, but the people who looked like me in fiction were so often being wronged. 

Why were white women held up as princesses to be cherished in castles and gardens, while we were maids and slaves? I wanted for us to be affluent and powerful, strong, purposeful. A state of constant suffering could not be our only reason for existing. 

We deserved beauty, tranquility, and to have our slice of Heaven on Earth. I intended to do my part and secure that for us. This was how I thought as a kid of about twelve or thirteen.

I found that success. I put my creative writing and acting skills to use in a huge statewide competition my senior year of high school that I won. Those scholarships paid for my college. Pledging a sorority, working as a staffer on Capitol Hill, going to law school, reaching the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, becoming president of Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, I achieved one shiny title after another. And I'm blessed that I was in the position to help scores of families. I fought for justice on behalf of a lot of people.  

That thirteen-year-old girl who imagined herself running the world achieved just about everything she set out after.

But she was miserable. Driving to work everyday felt like driving to prison. To be so blessed, why was I always so unhappy?

Success doesn't always mean fulfillment. We spend so much time striving for that pie in the sky only to finally taste it and find out it's bitter. 

At age 42, I walked away from all I'd worked so hard to achieve-- the respect of my colleagues, the "name" I'd made for myself, my identity as a "Los Angeles lawyer," solid health insurance, the prestige and status, and let's certainly not forget the six-figure salary it took a decade to finally earn. That's no easy move.

I didn't know the first thing about running my own business or what it would take to survive as an author. I only understood that I was empty, and my creativity that had gotten me far was languishing in me. I needed to blend my love of travel, culture, my experiences in beautiful settings, knack for research, and obsession with history, into stories that entertain and expand us.

I believe that's my purpose. For my brush to paint that world I've always envisioned, where people who look like me are limitless.

I hope when you close my books, a multidimensional and limitless world is what you feel you've visited.