Marasha Love is a Mixed Race, former ward of the state of Texas and adoptee, born to a White mother and previously unidentified father. Adopted as a toddler, her adoptive mother (a Chinese-Jamaican immigrant) and father (a Native Texan) raised her as a bi-racial (half-White, half-Asian) child in adoptee isolation.
While the paternal half of Marasha’s racial identity was unknown until age 35–despite actively searching from the age of 17–she uncovered her paternal race as Chăm. She continues the excavation of her ancestral identity; finding, navigating, and being in reunion with paternal and maternal biological siblings and relatives; and processing meeting and losing the biological father she found in 2025.
She is an advocate for wards of the state and adoptees to fully access their original birth certificates and all records of their origins and custody.
Her work has appeared in Quarterly West, The Ex-Puritan, Litbreak, Ragazine, The Santa Fe Literary Review, among others. She previously published under a different name.
She received her MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in 2017, where she was an Assistant Professor, Developmental Education and Summer Bridge Coordinator, and received the honor of AICF “Faculty of the Year” in 2019.
She has taught and mentored middle and high schoolers in rural and urban New Mexico; Khayamandi, South Africa; and San Carlos, Mexico.
Marasha Love 