My mother is white and my father was black. I am not alone in this. I grew up in the Bronx, New York City. Born in 1967. A relatively safe time and place for a brown girl of ambiguous ethnicity. As the mother of two little brown girls, I like to believe that race doesn't matter much. But the election of Barack Obama woke me up. Ignorance is everywhere. Race labels ring in my ears. They stick and they stain. Even when they fade. This is my rant, from “post-racial America”. Hoping to shed some light.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Poly Styrene Was My #1 Hero

I was a punk rock kid in the early Eighties, when MTV was very new, and punk fashion was something you made up as you went along. The clothes and the music were counter-culture. And every kid who was into it was asserting their outcast status. Even outcasts need heroes - especially fifteen-year-old outcasts.

Today I got news that my #1 hero, Poly Styrene of the band X-ray Spex, died yesterday of breast cancer. She was 53.

My close friends in high school and I loved her. I mean, we truly loved her. Her band had one album, Germfree Adolescents, and a few singles, and we knew them all. I have them all. Some in duplicate, on neon-colored vinyl. Her lyrics were clever, poetic, wise beyond her years, and so very clear. She was political. She was a biracial brown girl, shrieking and singing, and pogo dancing, in crazy new wave outfits. With braces on her teeth. Another girl in the band played saxophone. They rocked. I loved them more than I can say.

I have to include a video for those of you who didn't know her. The song is "Identity". YouTube is loaded with brilliant footage of Xray Spex. Thank You YouTube.



The media has gotten wind of Poly's death and you can find plenty of press clippings out there.

What I can contribute is this:

Poly Styrene was the face and voice of so many of us, who were disenfranchised and angry and insecure. She made us brave. The power of her conviction earned her idol status in my world. I was in my first band when I was fifteen. We played CBGBs, The Pyramid, Danceteria. I couldn't sing like Poly, but I played a steady bass and we were cuter than hell. I kept it up, through college and beyond, and would have made a career out of it had we not grown tired of the industry disclaimer, "You guys are hard to categorize". I guess I will always be hard to categorize. Like Poly Styrene. I am so grateful to have found her, and to have been able to share her music and spirit with friends, and at DJ gigs, and here.

I wonder who my girls will trust, when they're fifteen and hating their parents.
Posted by BROWNGIRL at 11:11 AM
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