Poignant and personal. Intimate and intriguing. Follow the psychological life of a young girl from early childhood through young adulthood growing up within a highly unusual family in highly conventional times. Dr. Naomi Rucker’s emotional journey and distinctive life leave a lasting imprint on the adult she becomes.

Written with intellectual curiosity in a thought-provoking and emotionally engaging style, Naomi’s experience as an only child within an interracial marriage in the 1950s and 1960s details her own inner life and provides a window into psychological processes present in all people. This exploration of the depths of our unconscious bonds touches on both our individuality and the commonalities that connect us as human beings.

Love, commitment, disappointment, fear, aloneness, anger, trauma are all present here as part of Naomi’s emotional history, reflecting the rigid cultural forces of the times and the pathos that always exists within the condition of being human.

Naomi Rucker’s intimate story is enriched by the thoughtful attention of Dr. Karen Lombardi, her close friend and colleague for many decades. Dr. Lombardi’s insightful commentary and special viewpoint reveal further layers of meaning in Naomi’s history. Together, these psychoanalysts with strong ties to both clinical practice and academia, and who share perspectives on most things human, have brought the theories and concepts of their work and thinking to this very candid tale of a life.

In The Color Human, two lifelong students of the human mind illuminate the conscious and unconscious connections in Naomi’s individual life, the lives of her close family members, and the sociocultural environments that molded all of them. With vulnerability and courage, the authors explore one individual psyche deeply, revealing psychological and social processes that mold everyone and color our common human lineage.