Ulla Dentlinger studied Social Anthropology at the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch. After raising a family in Portland, Oregon, she and her family live in Germany today, with her spending time between Europe and southern Africa.

Growing up in poor, rural Apartheid-Namibia in the early 1950s, Ulla Dentlinger soon learns that her parents are not prone to reminisce about their family's past. The most mundane information about their background is guarded much like a state secret. As a child, she begins to panic at being asked the question so normal to others: "Where are you from?"
Only in later years it dawns on her that she had to be a "Coloured". The sense of conflict increases incrementally. Nonetheless, after living in Namibia for the first six years of her life, she grows up in a white area in Cape Town, goes to a white school and bears herself in a German fashion. She has, in fact, jumped the colour line.
Returning to southern Africa in the 1990s, she now openly pursues investigations into her family background. Ulla Dentlinger portrays some of her relatives and their intimate, painful or straightforward stories as well as her own emotional realisation about her enriching heritage.