tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62466589863749424752024-02-18T21:50:54.573-05:00Browngirl Cleans Upnotes from a multiracial mother/wife/daughter/sister/aunt/niece/cousinBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-52368576999897378462019-02-08T10:49:00.000-05:002019-02-08T10:49:27.734-05:00MFA Put The Breaks OnThis blog is a time capsule. It contains over seventy short essays, nearly all of which I wrote before enrolling in the MFA Writing Program at Columbia University. Yup, I did it. I spent my life's savings, and energy I never guessed I had, and I graduated in May, 2018.
One surprising lesson learned: nearly all of my brilliant and generous instructors advised me to STOP BLOGGING, because a blog BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-88476921405259140432017-08-16T16:36:00.000-04:002017-08-16T16:36:57.425-04:00Charlottesville Reveal
I returned from Spain to discover
my home in shambles.
Not the house in which I live, but
the country I call home.
My husband, two daughters and I had
spent twelve days abroad, to visit my grandfather’s homeland, a place that has
always held my heart. When I’m there, something in the blood says, “This is
you, and you are thisBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-62820546551991921862016-11-09T11:05:00.001-05:002016-11-09T11:06:07.493-05:00Communal Tears
Late last night, in the throes of my despair over the apparent outcome of our presidential election, I heard Van Jones say that it was a hard night to be a parent. A hard night to put our children to bed, hard to anticipate the morning's breakfast conversation.
I woke my children up gently this morning, with the upsetting news that Donald Trump would be our next president. They responded with BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-9034523585154206022016-07-08T12:58:00.000-04:002016-07-08T12:59:06.864-04:00Hurt and Fear
(photo: AP)
I catch myself hiding my tears from my daughters this morning. The shooting death of Philando Castile, captured on video by his girlfriend (pictured) in the immediate gaze of her little daughter. The four-year-old assuring her mommy that she'll be OK as their beloved lies dying. Shot by a white police officer in front of their eyes.
I'm crying for that little brown girl, and allBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-321590085483183352016-06-14T15:06:00.000-04:002016-06-14T15:06:32.163-04:00What Would Muhammad Ali Do?
This past Saturday, I was especially grateful to the New York Times' editorial staff for compiling an in-depth, special-edition-insert tribute to Muhammad Ali. My children had heard me blather on about his Greatness all week long, but the photos and detailed chronology of his achievements made him real for my girls, who are too young to have known him. It also gave me the opportunity to BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-57730914727757600042016-03-31T21:16:00.000-04:002016-04-07T04:44:57.039-04:00Mommy's Checking Boxes
Last year, around Thanksgiving, I
decided to apply to graduate school. I could see that my daughters, ages ten
and twelve, had entered a less needy phase of life, and I felt ready for my own
new phase. So I braced myself, recalling the last time I’d toiled over college
applications, circa 1984. This time, I was deeply grateful for the
technological tools that ease the process. Filling out all BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-55360415865189248472016-01-07T11:39:00.000-05:002016-01-11T17:17:45.266-05:00Imagine: Race is Over
It's a new year.
An election year. The end of an era. Soon we will stop being America With It's First Black President. It's a messy ending, marked by what many are calling the New Civil Rights Movement.
I was born during the "old" Civil Rights movement.
I was a black child, raised by a white mother, at a time when no one denied that race mattered. Remnants of Jim Crow were rampant in theBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-24425724263308278892015-10-28T14:26:00.002-04:002015-10-28T14:28:12.342-04:00Top 2 Summer Reads: Loving Day, and Oreo
As August wound down, I had big plans to write up a Summer Reading List report. That was my September goal, because summertime is reading season, and I read a lot of good books. I surrender to my summer reality: that any creative impulse that dares to surface between June 15 and September 7 is summarily overwhelmed by the needs and wants of my children. Life generates a lot of goodBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-55186181657645669922015-08-22T14:35:00.000-04:002015-08-22T14:38:38.158-04:00AFROPUNK - What?
My band, The Scene: that's me on the right.
Back in 1983, I was a 16-year-old black girl playing bass guitar
in a rock band. We were a trio of mixed-race mutts, and we had gigs at CBGB’s, the Pyramid Club, Danceteria, et al. One of
our favorite bands was the Bad Brains, a tripped-out black hardcore punk band
from Washington, DC. My personal hero was Poly Styrene, the brown girl lead
singer of BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-50921710915525887262015-07-08T18:04:00.000-04:002015-07-31T15:40:02.762-04:00Rachel Dolezal Turns White Privilege On Its Booty
Rachel Dolezal has left the headlines, but she won't leave my brain.
My family and I refer to her as "the white black lady." We would have believed her claim to blackness had we met her. We know women who look a lot like her: a mixed brown girl, like my daughters and myself.
When her story broke, I wondered along with everyone else, "Why on earth would a white woman from Montana work soBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-32688784823170582022015-05-14T14:07:00.000-04:002015-05-14T14:08:14.995-04:00William Zinsser, R.I.P.
(photo from WilliamZinsser.com)
William Zinsser was, by all accounts, a brilliant writing teacher. And because he wrote books on the subject, he will continue to be a brilliant writing teacher, even now that his physical body has died. It was just yesterday, May 13th, that he passed. I found out this morning, thanks to my husband's daily trolling of the New York Times headlines.
"I feelBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-36308159389578159842015-04-28T22:27:00.000-04:002015-04-28T22:30:52.540-04:00Baltimore Sorrow<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-3210050589571186802015-03-24T22:23:00.000-04:002015-03-24T22:23:36.185-04:00"Little White Lie": a film review
I'm a big fan of documentary film, memoir, and multicultural stories. Suffice it to say, Lacey Schwartz's movie Little White Lie checked my boxes. I was floored by the many parallels between her story and my own: the scenes of her as a little brown girl, in the arms of her Jewish white mother, then growing into an ambiguously brown young woman with "black friends" and "white BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-55061532110011810802015-03-11T10:54:00.000-04:002015-03-11T10:54:15.217-04:00Browngirl Gets PaidWhen you sign a freelance writing contract, and you're not a fabulously well-known author, the entity who will be signing your checks wants to own the copyright to your work. They want publishing exclusivity, and they usually get it.
So PLEASE check out this piece I wrote for LifetimeMoms.com, sponsored by Wells Fargo (yes, that Wells Fargo). It's the kind of gig I never would have considered inBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-88898388565967372482015-02-19T15:13:00.000-05:002015-02-19T15:13:02.135-05:00Black History Month BashI still don't like Black History Month.
I last wrote on the topic in 2011, and my feelings haven't changed. Well, maybe they've intensified. It's not the recognition of Black History that I don't like; it's the objectification of Black History that makes me crazy. Example: the African-American sections in our libraries and book stores. The systemic segregation of black stories is not a BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-56620555578584783662015-01-18T21:48:00.000-05:002015-01-18T21:59:48.384-05:00Martin Luther King, Jr. 2015
"Violence as a way of achieveing racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-38825300914811723142014-12-18T17:18:00.000-05:002014-12-18T17:18:20.589-05:00Reading List 2014
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BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-33085057928586965672014-12-04T15:53:00.000-05:002014-12-05T07:16:27.046-05:00No Staten Island Indictment? What The Fuck??There is no justice or peace for the family of Eric Garner, or the rest of us.
When the Ferguson ruling came down, I wrote about it for LifetimeMoms.com.
Here's a link to the article - they have the exclusive right to it. Fair enough.
LifetimeMoms.com
The piece also appears on the LifetimeMoms Facebook page, where it continues to draw heated reactions from all sides, including BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-47770968714468960702014-11-05T12:30:00.000-05:002014-11-05T12:31:12.409-05:00"Black-ish" TV: Biracial Mom Alert<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-34406781245304707672014-10-09T13:04:00.001-04:002014-10-09T13:04:57.084-04:00Bloggers Love That Biracial Baby! And Hate Her Moms.Have you heard about the little Ohio girl whose moms are suing the sperm bank over her blackness?
This story has stirred up an incredible amount of chatter on the blogosphere, much of it ugly.
So when LifetimeMoms invited me to submit a piece, how could I resist?
Most of the public commentary has been heavily weighted by prejudice and supposition. Broadcast interviews of the birth mother were BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-76321760793585548212014-09-21T22:18:00.001-04:002014-09-21T22:18:55.877-04:00Passing StrangeThe term "passing" is loaded.
No matter which way you use it, or hear it, the implication is that someone is trying to be perceived as something they are not. You understand I'm not working in the context of test scores, right?
Growing up in the 1970's and 80's, I never thought I was passing. I was black. When people asked me what I was - which happened often - I answered "Black." If the BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-1741695838745303292014-09-04T15:22:00.000-04:002014-09-04T15:26:08.175-04:00Ferguson, MO FalloutI was sitting in a local deli eating lunch with my children when I got my first taste of the Ferguson, Missouri police brutality fiasco. A muted TV above our heads showed CNN's Wolf Blitzer standing in front of night-vision video of a rioting crowd, under the attack of what looked like grenades. I first assumed it was footage of a recent civilian uprising in some far-off land. And then the BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-27195040389714393562014-08-14T22:53:00.000-04:002014-08-14T22:53:10.898-04:00Sensitivity Training
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BROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-67532038984056722132014-08-07T15:25:00.000-04:002014-08-07T15:25:47.128-04:00I'm published on Lifetime Moms.com!It's crazy, I know.
This week, instead of posting here I've contributed to the website Lifetime Moms.com.
I have my dear friend Laura Grimm to thank, for sharing this blog with the powers that be. They liked my writing, gave me an assignment, and now it's live!
THANK YOU, LAURA!
I want to take a breath and welcome any new readers who may have found me via Lifetime Moms. Please take a look aroundBROWNGIRLhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08244227676414020361noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6246658986374942475.post-20141560590283650382014-08-01T18:23:00.001-04:002014-08-01T18:23:20.145-04:00Race & Beauty<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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