My first viral video celebrates the mission of Two Sisters Writing & Publishing!
My Instagram video entitled “What it’s like as a White-Looking Woman and at Black Event” has 429,000 views and has been growing since I posted it on August 16.
I was inspired to make this video in the afterglow of leading a “How to Write & Publish Your Book” workshop at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia on August 15. The workshop was high-energy, interactive, and you could feel the inspiration pulsing through the 50 journalists who packed the room as I shared decades’ worth of writing and publishing experience as co-founder of Two Sisters Writing & Publishing, a book coach, an elite ghostwriter, and a bestselling author since my first novel published by St. Martin’s Press in 1998.
You can watch the video here.
This viral video captures the essence of why my sister Catherine Greenspan and I co-founded our company that specializes in celebrating and showcasing diverse voices.
Because as white-looking, mixed-race kids growing up in an interracial family during the 1970s, we did not have books, movies, role models, celebrities or any affirmation of kids and families like us. High-profile people like President Barack Obama, golf phenom Tiger Woods, Grammy songstress Mariah Carey, and superstar actress Zendaya, were not in the global spotlight yet, and the Internet and social media did not yet exist.
Then when we became English Literature majors at the University of Michigan, the books that we read about mixed-race people were all about the “tragic mulatto” trope—the person who is too white to be Black and too Black to be white and therefore suffers miserably in a grim gray area of rejection, abuse, and sadness that leads to their demise.
That is not and never has been our story!
So Catherine and I wrote ourselves into American Literature by writing stories about our own experience. Catherine wrote The Veronica Series, three Young Adult novels, while earning her Masters in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Then I wrote my master’s thesis while attending the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York on the history of race-mixing in America through the lens of my own experience and interviews with dozens of people across the country.
My first three novels featured mixed-race heroines exploring provocative themes about race and identity. These romantic thrillers published by St. Martin’s Press include Dark Secret about a woman passing for white, and Twilight, which I co-authored with Star Wars actor Billy Dee Williams, about a woman who discovers that she’s biracial.
Later, Catherine and I co-founded Two Sisters Writing & Publishing and published our own books along with our mother’s memoir, The Triumph of Rosemary: a Memoir by Judge Marylin E. Atkins, which is now a screenplay that will soon be shopped to Hollywood as a feature film.
It’s beyond thrilling that my three-minute Instagram post has generated so much attention to this message that aligns with our mission here at Two Sisters. We are now celebrating the publication of 70+ books in 10 years since we started in 2016, with many more inspiring memoirs in line for publication later this year and in 2027.
Another highlight is the tremendous amount of love and affirmation in the comments of my video. Yes, a few negative comments popped up, including those from folks who don’t believe that I am mixed-race. Others called me “Rachel” in reference to Rachel Dolezal, a white NAACP Spokane chapter leader exposed in 2015 for presenting herself as Black for years, sparking a national debate over racial identity.
The overwhelmingly positive response to the video inspired me to make another popular Instagram reel sharing the books we have written and published about our family. And for those saying that I’m “passing for white”—when they actually meant “white-presenting”—I made another video asking this question and explaining that if I were “passing”—which means hiding my Black identity and living as a white woman—I would not have gone on the Internet—or many national TV shows including Montel, Ananda Lewis, BET with Kym Whitley, The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, Good Morning America Sunday, and others—talking about being a mixed-race woman. I also would not have published an article inspired by my master’s thesis in The New York Times, or written other articles for Ebony and Essence magazines. And I would not have done NPR interviews on the topic, or taken to stages as a keynote speaker doing my autobiographical “White Chocolate” poem that celebrates my identity and how I challenge how people perceive race.
This viral video has deeply affirmed the mission and objectives of Two Sisters Writing & Publishing: to continue writing, publishing, and promoting books that showcase the beautiful diversity of human beings, and by cultivating harmony and inclusion by sharing powerful stories that touch the minds and hearts of people everywhere.
Elizabeth Ann Atkins is a bestselling author, Emmy-nominated TV host, actress, and award-winning journalist. She co-founded Two Sisters Writing and Publishing with her sister, Catherine M. Greenspan, a company that has written and published over 60 memoirs, novels, business books, and journals since 2016. With a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan, Elizabeth has written over 20 books and is widely known as America’s Book Coach. She also hosts The Goddess Power Show, a podcast and YouTube channel that explores topics empowering women to live bigger, better, and bolder.