My Year In Books

I have a memory problem when it comes to books. I recognize titles I've read, but I have serious difficulty recalling the details of the stories. If a book is well-known and much-talked-about, I have a decent chance of remembering the important parts. But if I have to rely solely on myself to reconnect with a story, I usually have to  do some serious re-reading. So I buy books, and I keep them around. If I really enjoy a library book, I usually buy it - sometimes before I've finished reading it the first time through. Because I expect I will want to revisit it some time, in an urgent sort of way. That's how I do it.

I'm currently reading the new memoir by Alexandra Styron, daughter of William Styron, titled Reading My Father. The book interests me on many levels. One, because the father Styron's controversial masterpiece The Confessions of Nat Turner  is a startling, unique book, and the author of such work is inherently interesting to me. Also, I have met a few members of his family, and it's impossible to pretend that I'm not curious about their famous patriarch, who apparently had several personality traits similar to my own father. Finally, I've written a manuscript  about my father and our relationship. So a purportedly well-written memoir by a daughter about her father is, well, something I should check out. I'm only thirty pages in, so I'll tell you what my early preoccupation is:

Alexandra Styron was born within months of the publication of The Confessions of Nat Turner. It was 1967, the year of my birth. Yes, the civil rights movement was in full swing. Clearly, this book took a lot of balls to write. A white Southern man assuming the voice of a black slave, narrating the circumstances leading to a murderous slave revolt. It's a fascinating undertaking, a great book, and an important piece of our country's literary history. 

I re-read Nat Turner about a year ago, after hearing about a book that was published in immediate reaction to the original manuscript. The reaction book is a collection of essays titled William Styron's Nat Turner/ Ten Black Writers Respond. I found the out-of-print Respond on Amazon, through an obscure little book shop in L.A., and I bought it for about six bucks. Then I went out to our local indie book store and bought Nat Turner, figuring I'd read it while I waited for the mail to come. I had read it before, but was unsure when. I'm sure it was in school, before college, when I was way too naive to appreciate the scope of impact of the work. In fact, I had probably assumed the author was black. 

Now, the Respond book is - you guessed it - angry. On the back cover is printed:

BECAUSE THERE WERE NO MAJOR BLACK REVIEWS OF WILLIAM STYRON'S

  THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER  TEN BLACK WRITERS RESPOND:

The black writers are pissed off. Offended, disgusted and hostile in their responses. The common thread in their essays is the accusation that Styron's portrait of Nat Turner supports the toxic black stereotypes of the day, and that Turner's true character and motivations are horribly misrepresented. They identify Styron's book as a potent example of the continued defamation of black men (and women). Again, this collection is an important piece of literary history. It's a real document, depicting the raw emotions of a time that some of us take for granted. I know I do. Some of the essays left me thinking, "Oh wow. Don't  be so defensive! It's a historical novel, right? It's a story of another time."  Then I have to stop myself, to honor the realities of the day. And I imagine Styron and James Baldwin, his friend and  confidant (and co-conspirator, some might say) as they sat around that groovy Styron family Connecticut farmhouse and discussed the text, the context, and the potential influence of the book as it was being developed.

All three of these books are a time capsule of my birth year. They remind me of how far we've come, and how much ground we still have to cover.

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.

James Baldwin Speaks

I'm reading the collection, James Baldwin - The Cross of Redemption (uncollected writings). It includes essays, speeches, profiles, reviews and letters from the 1940's to the '80's. I borrowed it from the library and the 14-day loan is not gonna cut it. This book is on fire. James Baldwin was so unbelievably smart. His novels are beautiful. His essays are spellbinding. I am enthralled.

The speech excerpt below is stuck in my brain; it's from an appearance Baldwin made before a House Select Subcommittee in New York. He spoke in support of a proposed bill to establish a national commission on "Negro History and Culture." He makes several brilliant points. In this snippet, Baldwin  defends his position on how and why the stories of American History, as taught in schools, should be revised in order to break patterns of stereotyping and subjugation of the black population.

The year is 1969:

"If we are going to build a multicultural society, which is our only hope, then one has got to accept that I have learned a lot from you, and a lot of it is bitter, but you have a lot to learn from me, and a lot of that will be bitter. That bitterness is our only hope. That is the only way we get past it. Am I making sense to you?"



Now, the year is 2011:

It's Spring Break. It's raining, both of my kids are fighting colds. I haven't done much writing this week. But I am reading. Always reading. And James Baldwin is keeping me sane from the grave.

Forty-two years of talking about our multicultural society and I'm thinking that we still have a lot to learn about each other. The text books have come a long way since 1969, but I worry that kids still read history like I did when I was ten, like it's long done gone.

Are we learning? Or are we sitting quietly, complacent, hopeful that time alone will melt that bitterness?
I wish folks would stop being coy and delicate about race.
I'm looking for some progress here.

Natural History

I live in a stone house on a mountain. It's a small mountain, forty minutes north of midtown Manhattan. The wildlife in these parts is still running free. We see deer on our road almost daily. Bunnies frolic in our front yard after dark. Wild turkeys flaunt their gangly broods up and down my driveway, in broad daylight. Hawks circle overhead, and coyotes roam the neighbor's meadow at dusk. Down the mountain, on any side, you might call it Suburbia. Some stretches are less quaint than others. Scenic vistas, car dealerships, antique shops and sports bars, and a mammoth shopping mall are all within a few minutes drive.

My favorite part is the dirt. Especially at this time of year, the smell of wet dirt in the  morning is invigorating, and comforting. The birds have returned from their southern sojourn, the daffodils are in full flower, and the woods behind our house have that telltale chartreuse fuzz at the tips. Spring is popping.

I loved it as a city kid, like I love it now. Our corner of the Bronx could almost pass for the suburbs, if caught from the right angle.  Our 21-story apartment building had a playground, and the playground was surrounded with a high forsythia hedgerow and little cherry trees. My mother, the biologist, made sure I knew the names of the plants, the birds, the butterflies. We had Field Guides to everything, and binoculars to match.

I thank my mother for teaching me to notice nature around me. And to see the different contributions that the plants and creatures make to our surroundings. I've spent most of my life crediting her, and her naturalist/herbalist father, with my appreciation of the natural world. I have that connection with her still, as we compare notes in each other's gardens.

So I was startled to discover that my father's grandmother was an avid gardener. A fact I learned from an old family photo that I recently discovered. A middle-aged black woman, in house dress and apron, in a vast Victorian-era garden behind the little Massachusetts house I know to be her own. The photo must be from the Twenties or Thirties, and the garden is lush, and layered with mature plantings, obviously the product of many years of diligent work.

I had never seen a house-proud American black woman in her own beautiful garden, from any time period.

I'm sure there must be some images out there. But what comes to mind of course is slave imagery, sharecropping imagery, and some farming imagery from modern times. Where is the disconnect?

My father loved his garden. He called it a yard, but it was an acre around his house on Long Island. He carefully designed and maintained the landscape, and enjoyed raking the sea of leaves that dropped every fall. He planted a gorgeous cut leaf maple in honor of Duke Ellington's birthday one year. And marveled at the full six-foot height of the junipers, which were smaller than four-year-old me when he put them in.

Most of my friends would rather not touch dirt. Or bugs. I suspect it has more to do with having grown up in the city than with any race-related phenomenon. But I can't help but question whether a wall came down as blacks moved north, separating us from "our agricultural past".

I relish the quiet work of gardening. It's an active connection to my American Indian heritage, and my grandfather the herbalist, and  my father with his rake, and my great-grandmother in her Massachusetts garden, and the countless unknown ancestors' connections to the land.

In these lean, green times, I hope to see more of us getting down in the dirt.

chapter/ Number One

He was Number One. He told me, rather nonchalantly, over the phone.  

“I have some interesting news: it seems I’ve been voted Best Radio News Personality,” he said, in his signature, velvet monotone.  Daddy was the late-night voice of 1010-WINS Radio: You Give Us Twenty-Two Minutes, We’ll Give You The World. Perfected for broadcast and permanently imprinted on his off-air persona, his meter and tone captured a controlled balance of enthusiasm, authority, and calm. His evening shift ran from 6:30pm to 2:30am, Wednesdays through Sundays, so if you lived in the New York tri-state area in the 1970’s and 80’s, commuted to the suburbs or outer boroughs, rode in taxis after dark, or relied on the repetitive rhythms of news radio for late-night companionship, then my father’s voice anchored your evenings. 

When he won, I was fifteen years old, a full-fledged anti-establishmentarian punk rock kid. Fifteen, living in New York City, suffering the way middle-class American teenagers suffer: I was pissed at the world, powerless against my oppressors, victimized by the ills of our capitalist society. Distrusting anyone in authority. I wanted to hate my parents. That was the norm among my friends, most of whom lived in restrictive households, commandeered by teams of parental units whose power reigned supreme.  But my mother ruled our single-parent/only-child household with a Jell-o fist. As long as my grades didn’t slip, social deviance met no parental friction from her. While I complained long and loudly about the few rules she often threatened to enforce, I was truly grateful for my father’s open refusal to “interfere with whatever understandings” my mother and I had.

At fifteen, I was used to Daddy’s absence. As puberty encroached, our lives veered apart. We exchanged brief updates from time to time, but never went deep. His occasional invitations to dinner in the city confined our contact to the timeslot he usually reserved for copy revisions. If I played it right, he might get to know me. He might take an interest in what I had to say. Or we might just forfeit another fancy meal, pressed for time, short on answers. 

 “How’s school?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yes. It’s all right.”

“Are you still in that band?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what this hairdo is about?”

“I change my hair all the time.”

“It’s not very becoming. Is that supposed to be punk?”

“I guess.”

“Do you like that band The Sex Pistols?”

“They’re OK. They’re not my favorite.”

“I can’t believe your mother lets you listen to that garbage.”

Hush. I refuse to defend my mother to you. She is not the problem. I wait, hoping the silence will diffuse his strange bitterness. Watching him masterfully cut and chew, sip and swallow, finesse every move with the studied grace of a debutante, I choke on my own childish need for connection. 

Daddy was a private man. He rarely shared any details of his work, the celebrity interviews, or the fantastic events he covered as part of the job. His long-gone years in Colored Radio were a total mystery to me, only hinted at by my mother, who knew him then. His exclusive access to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as New York’s only black radio journalist, was part of his fragmented past. That black world, in which he had grown up, and subsequently discarded. 

He had ascended! Marriage to my mother marked the trailhead. The big job at WINS was the door to the kingdom, slamming shut behind him. The award must have been the final flag: he had reached the summit. His loyalty to the station, and his fierce adherence to every rule of propriety, had paid off. The sacrifices his parents made, to send him to Professional Children’s School, and the acting and modeling jobs that prepared him, and the very careful choices he made along the way, clinched his success. In an industry full of black stars he labeled “flashy, cornball disc jockeys”, he had few peers in the newsroom. No one he openly admired. He looked down on those who had failed to reach such heights, and held fast to his elite position on the mountaintop. 

I knew I should congratulate him on winning the award. This could be the start of a real connection. But where to begin?

“Did you win a little commemorative statue or something?” I asked.

“No. No statue. I’m sure the jerks at the station will make a big deal about it, in their own way. Make some sort of tacky plaque or something. But there is a prize attached to the award. It’s a trip. To London.  On the Concorde. You know, the supersonic transatlantic airliner.”

“Really?” I couldn’t see my father getting on a supersonic transatlantic airliner. Maybe in his youth, in the Army, when he had something to prove, or orders to follow. But the Daddy I knew was not looking for a thrill. His daily, round-trip drives between midtown and Southampton seemed to be all the adventure he could stand.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to the flight. But I’ve always wanted to see Paris. They’re sending us to Paris and London. Linda is already boning up on her French.”  Linda.  Of course he would take Linda. Smart, soft-spoken, selfless, impossible-to-dislike Linda: his girlfriend of the day, and co-worker at the station. A promising young copywriter. 

“Sounds great. I’d love to go to Europe some day,” I mused, without a hint of rancor.

“Well, maybe you’ll do some study abroad in college… Is there something you’d  like me to bring back for you?”

“From England? Or France?”  I tried not to care. But there were a thousand things I would have brought back for myself, from either place. Records (vinyl) from London, clothing from Paris. But Dad wouldn’t have a clue about any of it. Country Club Chic was his idea of high style. I was the East Village to his Park Avenue.

“Come on. There must be something,” he pushed.

It was a set-up. If I fed him something real, he would forget. Or fumble. Or forbid it altogether. Like the football I asked for, when I was ten: No daughter of mine is going to grow up with quarterback shoulders.

“How about just something really different. Something I can’t get here.” I left the choosing to him, resigned to appreciate the gesture behind whatever token he delivered.

While he was gone, I imagined how much his loyal fans must have missed him. The women who sent him amorous notes, in care of the station, enclosing photos of themselves. My own late-night taxi rides, piled tight with friends going from nightclub to party, were mercifully free of my father’s live voiceover. But could anyone trust what the next day’s weather would bring? 

And what did Daddy bring back for me, from his grand trip abroad? A pair of stretchy, acrylic, unbearably ugly electric blue knee socks emblazoned with the Union Jack, which must have cost three pounds at the Heathrow duty-free shop. Ironically, they were a great complement to my non-conformist wardrobe. I wore them over threadbare black tights, with a gray plaid miniskirt and combat boots.  The socks presented a pop of color in an otherwise bleak palette, the flags boldly flying in a bright, tidy band across my calves. I also received Linda’s slightly used pair of nylon comfort slippers, compliments of the Concorde. Which crumpled and died, forgotten in the bottom of my sock drawer.

The radio station issued a limited number of coffee mugs, printed up like newspaper articles, with his name and NUMBER ONE filling the the headline. They were numbered. I have mug #92, here on my desk, filled with writing tools. A quiet reminder. 

Readers Respond

I have fielded some remarkable comments on this blog.
I'm going to share two of them here, because the whole point of this thing is to confront the unspoken weirdness that we harbor about race.

A friend I've known for a few years, who grew up in the Midwest and who travels internationally on a regular basis, said:  "It never occurred to me that you were black. I figured you had something multiracial or multicultural going on, but I've never thought of you as black."

Someone else, who has known me for most of my life and who has spent time with me and my mother said:  "I never thought of your mother as white. Isn't she Spanish? And Jewish?... I think of Anglo-Saxon people as white."


I'm not going to tell you the race of either of these speakers yet.
Because I should explain what my mother looks like, and what I look like.
My mother has long white hair, which she wears in two braids. Her complexion is brunette/Mediterranean. She has a strong nose, cheerful brown eyes.
She lives outside of Woodstock, NY and looks the part.
I look Puerto Rican or Brazilian, I'm told. Light brown skin, very dark eyes, dark curly hair.
My style these days is casual-artsy-mom. Can you see us?

At the time of this posting, I am looking forward to making time for a serious chat with speaker #1, who happens to be white. Here I am again, wondering where my blackness has gone. Is it me? Or has there been a radical shift in our labeling system?

The second speaker is black, born to parents whose families have been in the US for generations. Her tight scope of the white label has my head spinning. It's true that my mother, being the daughter of immigrants, has no personal connection to the legacy of slavery, or the mistreatment of blacks in this country. Is that what makes her non-white? Is Spain a non-white country of origin? I've been all over Spain, and it was pretty darn white. I was considered Cuban there! Maybe it's the Judaism that's not white? But all the Jews I know are white.

Yes, my head is spinning. How about yours?

Southern Blues

Thank goodness my husband has enough time on his hands to notice that The New York Times ran another piece in their fantabulous Race Remixed series last Sunday. That's right, I'm just getting to it. Well, I officially launched this here blog this week, and have been overwhelmed in every way by the experience of going public. It's like running naked through a family reunion. My people thought they knew me!!

Anyway, this time the Times chose to focus on the South. Very brave. The big point of the article is that race mixing is going on more than ever down in Dixie, and that across America, the rates of multicultural marriage and birth are growing. States with historically high rates are keeping on, while there seems to be a marked boom in places you might least expect. Seems we're everywhere.



Here's a little story about my experiences traveling around this massive American country I call home. In a past life (ie before motherhood) I worked as a tour manager for various musicians - mostly rock bands - on the road. I figure I have circled around the entire country eleven times. Yes Alaska, no Hawaii. Sound strange? It's true, there are very few women tour managers, very few black tour managers (even in hip-hop, y'all), and well, in my ten years out there, I never came across a non-caucasian female tour manager. It was a strange career choice, and I really loved it for the most part. I worked with a lot of interesting and talented people. NONE of these artists played music that would be classified as Black. With very few (ok, 2) exceptions, I was traveling around the US or Europe via van, bus or airplane, the only brown person in a motley entourage of 5-15 musicians and crew. And I was the one in charge. I handled the money, I negotiated travel crises, I managed guest lists, and made sure everyone was fed their requisite favorite foods, to the best of my ability. The gigs were of every shape and size: bars, mid-sized rock clubs, grand theaters, outdoor music festivals, and sports arenas. And because this blog is not about my life in the music business, I'm going to resist listing the names of the artists I worked with. I will say this: The audiences were not black. The promoters were not  black. I have driven through places, and worked in spaces where I was the only representative of brown. In retrospect, it's possible I went undetected.

Augusta, Georgia was the only place the road took me where I felt unmistakable racism.
I was with a very fine rock trio, living in a van, chasing their CD sales on a two-month national tour. We were a troop of five, including our soundman, Jacques, a bald-headed, tattooed German national who topped off at six-foot-six. He was smart, funny, kind, and quite capable. But if you were casting the role of a Nazi Skinhead, he'd be your man. We pulled into what was probably the big rock bar in Augusta, and got to work unloading gear and sound checking. Early on, I got the feeling the place was a popular watering hole, regardless of who was playing. There was a scene of regulars, and a lot of friendly banter lubed by free-flowing cheap beer.

I was sitting in a booth with one of the band members off to the side, when a tall guy in a swastika-emblazoned "SS" t-shirt walked by. He was tall. His shirt was long and tight-fitting, and the swastika across his back was probably fourteen inches across, red ink on a white background. The "SS" was in the jagged style made popular by Hitler, as you might have guessed. I was floored. My companion noticed, and said something like. "Ew. Yuck." I said, "I gotta get outta here." And I walked quickly past the dude in the shirt, straight outside to the van, which I quickly opened and shut behind me.

No one came out to check on me. Then Jacques came out to get something out of the van, surprised to find me there. "Why aren't you inside?" he asked, in his casual Schwarzenegger monotone. "Did you see that guy with the swastika shirt?" I asked. "What guy?" "The one with the fucking SS t-shirt." "Oh. Yeah. Well." he said.  "Well?! I'm not going in there. I am not spending the night in there." I was uncharacteristically hysterical.  "He's just one guy," says giant German Jacques. I explain, "I have never been in a place where that kind of bullshit would be tolerated. It makes me sick." "You have to get past it. Don't make such a big deal," my friend said, turning his back and going back into the bar. My heart hurt. My ears burned. And I wanted to get away from that shitty bar more than anything. But I had to stay. So I lurked by the front entrance, then hid backstage during the show.

Later,  on route to the hotel, we all talked about the shirt, the guy in the shirt, and the crowd, who really enjoyed the music that night. I was still upset. The others thought I should stop worrying about it. We were leaving Augusta behind, headed for Atlanta in the morning.

That was seventeen years ago.
I hadn't thought much about Augusta, Georgia since I stopped working on the road. Until I heard a woman sing, a woman named Sharon Jones. She's a black woman, not much older than me, from Augusta. I hope you've heard her. If you haven't, you must. She sings with a Brooklyn-based act called Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and they are American soul music, like Etta James and the Stax Records catalogue. Her voice is so real it just might make you cry.

So I guess Augusta's not all bad.

Both Sides, Now

This post is not about Joni Mitchell. It's about Barack Obama, and how unfortunate it is that so many  people are so disappointed in him.

After writing the title of this post, I had a freaky flashback to an embarrassing elementary school moment, when my 5th grade music teacher made us sing "Both Sides, Now" - by heart - at a school assembly. We had no idea what the lyrics meant. It seemed very hippy dippy. And our performance was sappy like a maple tree in April.  I admire and respect Ms. Mitchell greatly, but I have only bad feelings about this song. It's about clouds, and love, and ice cream castles... Let me take a moment to find the song:  here it is. Careful. It's going to lodge in your brain, and you just may spend the rest of the day regretting having listened to it.

Anyway, I'm trying to get to a real point, which is all about our President, Barack Obama. And I will get to other points about him in future posts, but today's point is this:

I am proud to have voted in a president who is thoughtful, intelligent, and open-minded. I don't always support his decisions or actions. But I believe that he consults his Cabinet, weighs opposing arguments, and  has a gift for deriving reasonable compromise, in areas where most of us can not see past our own strongly held opinions. How would you get us out of Iraq? Rectify Guantanamo? Reverse the deficit? Undo the damage of No Child Left Behind? Fight terrorism?

Obama's ability to compromise, to generously consider both sides of an argument, is so f*cking important! And I for one attribute this ability to his being biracial.

I wrote a piece about this theory of mine, on the morning of his election. Our local monthly magazine published it, as follows in its entirety. I haven't made any changes. It already has a time capsule quality, ripe with optimism, only three years gone. Like to read it? Here ya go:

++++

It’s 10am. My five-year-old is embroiled in kindergarten gym class antics, her three-year-old sister is nestled into the cozy confines of her preschool, and I have been crying intermittently for hours.

Barack Obama is the President Elect of the United States of America. An African American. A man of mixed heritage – black father, white mother, like me. A man whose parents’ marriage was not recognized by Virginia state law at the time of his birth, he won the electoral and popular votes in that same state last night. The achievements of his campaign have taught us so much about ourselves. Our new public image, of our country as a whole, will serve to empower nations of people, and speaks volumes about the state of the American dream. Because he won, our children are living in a new world. 

This crying jag started at 11 o’clock last night, after the girlies were finally asleep. We had reveled long past bedtime, at a neighborhood gathering where young children watched animated blockbusters on one screen, and adults sat glued to the rolling returns on another, surfing the cable and network news stations, accepting the early projections with cautious optimism; the children periodically asking, “Did he win yet?” with excitement fueled by a sugary buffet, as much as by the auspicious indicators on screen. 

At about 10 o’clock, Pennsylvania and Ohio turned blue on the big maps. I deflected the glassy-eyed exchanges of friends and neighbors. The pundits declared that McCain would need a mathematical miracle to win, but I was not about to believe it was a done deal, not after what happened the last time. It was too early to celebrate. 

At 10:45, we dragged our pajama-clad babes up to their beds, while visions of Victory Cupcakes danced in their heads. Their little brown bodies fell limp, free of tension, anxiety, and the anticipation of a New Day. 

At 11 o’clock, I sat in the big chair across from our living room TV, watching, while Husby disappeared behind the internet. Then a voter alert flashed: Obama is the projected winner of the presidential election. Could it be? I scrolled madly through reporting channels, MSNBC, CNN, even Fox, and found them all in agreement. McCain was about to deliver his concession speech. IT WAS REAL. Jesse Jackson’s tear-streaked face, “(his) heart overflowing with joy and hope”, conveyed the immense swell of emotions so many of us shared. Remembrances of the countless martyrs, and survivors, who had brought us to this place. The generations of black Americans who were now witness to the unthinkable, in the best possible light: A black family is headed to the White House. 

While some folks feel that Obama isn’t black enough, it seems to me that he’s precisely black enough. The diplomatic practice of living biracial in America is great leadership training. Owning family on both sides of a nation’s internal battles, life itself embodies a volatile junction. Commanding the tenacity and self-reliance to sustain a successful career in public service on these terms, Barack Obama is uniquely qualified to run our complex polyglot nation with compassion, empathy, and calm. He has spent a lifetime collaborating across the aisle. 

My five year old knows that we supported the Obama campaign. We explained to her that he was the smarter of the candidates, that he had the best ideas for fixing the problems in our country. The topic of race never entered our little chats, until this morning, on the drive to school: I pointed out to her that our new president is African-American, and that I am, and that she is too. And suddenly we were thrown into a dialogue about racial identity, somewhat reminiscent of conversations I had with my own parents, but in the context of a completely unfamiliar reality. I’ve spent thirty-plus years responding to society’s demands that I define my ethnicity, decode my own racial identity, decide which race labels of the day best suit my mixed-race status. My children are so young, they don’t know that people judge, and are judged, according to skin color. They see that people look different, and they really don’t care. 

This election presents the possibility that we, as a people, are capable of seeing with those eyes, and acting with that mindset. I want to believe that we, as individuals, are free to define ourselves through our actions, our words, and our combined efforts, exempt from prejudice. Any parent would want that for their children. Today, it feels very possible.

Nov. 5, 2008

chapter/ Color Coated

The day I stopped being a Black Girl is unclear to me now.

I do know that I felt it, for a while, before I let on. It must have been a slow transition. I would be able to name it better, had it been a single moment that brought the change. I don’t think it was anything I said or did; the label changed, and fell away, as other people saw fit.

My mother had always told me I was black.

“You’re black, like your father. My beautiful black girl.”
Not white, like her. Because where I come from, if you have any trace of brown in your skin, you’re not white. You’re the other thing that made you brown. The choices were clear: black and white. That’s how we were seen. A white woman with a black child.

I accepted what I was told.

I was definitely black through elementary school and junior high. It helped that I went to an independent school all those years, where the student body was small, and its diverse cultures were recognized with equal weight. But none of the other black kids had a white parent. Or white cousins, or grandparents. “Black” felt clear, and strong, even though it didn't define my place in the world.

In ninth grade, I transferred to an enormous public high school.

I was one of seven hundred freshmen, each of us craving acceptance into the vast fold. I quickly befriended a tall, beige-skinned girl named Lisa, whose gingery afro and grey-green eyes gave her away. Together, we wrestled the challenge of devising a label we could comfortably wear.

We agreed on the following:

BLACK kids came from black neighborhoods, had uniformly black relatives, and spoke about white people from the outside. 

HALF-BLACK sounded half-baked. Not whole, not representative of a complete story. 

MULATTO was totally out-dated. It conjured the illegitimate offspring of slave and master, long ago and far away. And was inevitably tied to “tragic”.

HYBRID came up during biology class. We liked its scientific slant and modern sound. But the word had yet to enter the common vernacular, and failed to convey any relevance to racial identity when applied to self. 

MIXED worked. But it begged to be clarified. And that loosed a torrent of internalized defenses. Why do you need to know?  Is my ethnicity really any of your business? How would you like to tell me about your parents’ lineage, and their parents – wouldn’t it be weird if I demanded that information from you?

Resentment beat enlightenment, and “Black” beat “Mixed” because it was just easier.

Most people were just curious, I guess. When kids asked, “What are you?” I knew what they meant. I tried to keep it simple.

“I’m black.”

“You don’t look black.”

“Well my mom is white.”

“Oh.”

Versus:

“What are you?”

“I’m mixed.”

“Mixed? What and what?”

“My dad is black, and my mom is Russian and Spanish. And my dad is also Irish and Native American.”

“Really? Wow. So what’s that like?”

“I don’t know. It’s just how it is.”

“Yeah, but - blah blah blah blah blah…..” 

Lisa and I were marked outcasts, adrift in a cafeteria teeming with culturally connected cliques - the Greek Club, the Korean Club, Italia, etcetera – until the kids at the punk rock table mercifully reeled us in. They were one of the few groups whose identity had no relation to the ethnicity of its members.

We were an angry lot, disenfranchised and disconnected - from our families, and in some cases from society at large. My anger was all about my father. I needed his attention, but couldn’t figure out how to get it. The more rebellious I became, the farther away he stayed.

On one of our rare visits during those strained high school years, I coyly mentioned that I had earned a National Merit Scholarship. The prize was an annual stipend that would put a substantial dent in my forthcoming college tuition. Appropriately impressed, he asked for the backstory of the award, and how I had come to win it. I explained that it was based on the scores of my achievement tests, and that it was specifically designated for black high school students.

“You’re not black!”  My father said, with complete authority. “Your mother has you filling out applications for those things?”

“Yes,” I answered, quietly, and unapologetically.

“Well, you’re not black.”

“I’m not?”

“No. You’re not.”

“But you are,” I said, as objectively as I could.

“And you’re not.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. He was that certain.

I didn’t look at him either. Instead, I stared out the window, at my reflection in the side view mirror. The girl looking back was about sixteen, her eyelids heavy with black liquid eyeliner and too much mascara. An asymmetrical, frizzy bob of pink and black hair completed her post-apocalyptic front. If I didn’t know her, I would have assumed she was Puerto Rican, and a real badass.  She was into clubbing, and staying out all night, and playing bass guitar in a loud band. Her mother allowed all of it, as long as the grades didn’t suffer. Her father aired his impotent disapproval with the tired refrain: “You’ve made it this far without any input from me. I suppose you’re too old for me to start interfering now.” She had come to expect very little. But his DNA was hers, and his repudiation of that bond left her broken. 

                                                              +++

It was August, the month of savage tans: one week past my fortieth birthday, and time for my annual mammogram.  Mom’s history of breast cancer put the fear in me. I would not follow her down that path. Any other, but not that. She loves her doctor, a breast specialist with a thriving practice in a small Westchester hospital. So I go there too, every year, like clockwork. And every year, the hospital paperwork seems so excessive. So many in-take questions, robotically posed and answered through a thick plexiglass partition, designed to quantify my chances of wellness.

My name was called, and I was directed to a closely walled cubicle, the domain of a highly groomed, twenty-something-year-old male clerk with a muscular build and very long eyelashes. I sat facing him, directly across his tiny desk. He half smiled, eyes glued to his computer screen. He struggled with my name, then proceeded without looking up.

“Height?”

“Five-four.”

“Weight?”

“One-forty.”

“Eye color…” - he glanced at my face for a split second, then answered for himself, “... dark brown. Hair, dark brown.” His were the same, his eyes an almost vacant black. I observed him intently, waiting for his vapid expression to reflect even the slightest interest in my personal details. He typed with superhuman speed, making eye contact with me only twice during the interrogation, probing my physiology with the curt efficiency of an alien abductor. Waxed eyebrows, straight gelled hair and a clear polish manicure completed his android persona.  Finally finished, he returned my insurance card, handed me the forms in duplicate, and sent me down the hall, through a poorly disguised construction zone. 

I sat alone in Mammography Reception, a temporary vestibule with three sad chairs and none of the basic niceties: no ventilation, not even a magazine. Hot and bored, I resorted to scanning my outpatient stats in shaded blue fields. That’s when I discovered I was White. My android friend had checked WHITE in the race field. All those tedious, stupid questions, and he didn’t even ask. He just filled it in, as he saw me.

I had been re-defined. And my new identity was documented.

I was my Russian grandmother, a teenaged refugee, at Ellis Island circa 1920.    

Documented.    

I was an African ancestor, human chattel in chains.   

Documented.    

I was a lost Indian cousin, subsisting, stranded on the rez.   

Documented.    

A strange white man with a desk job strikes again! 

I took out a pen and scratched out his checkmark and the word WHITE. Then I checked the box next to OTHER, daring somebody - anybody - to look at me and ask.  Maybe the mammography technician would notice. Maybe she would ask. He hardly even looked at me when he checked that box.
He was that certain.

Rosario Dawson Speaks Up

Rosario Dawson is an interesting young actress. A fellow browngirl, from New York City, a scant 10 or so years my junior. She's involved with a number of respectable charities, and apparently is not afraid to act up.

She grabbed Paul Rudd's "package", because he grabbed Eva Mendez' "boob" and wouldn't let go (above photo grabbed from The Huffington Post). Get the full story at Racialicious.com, and see/hear Ms. Dawson defending herself in this clip courtesy of Access Hollywood.


Once you get past her unfortunate overuse of the "like" modifier, she says a lot of worthwhile things about feminism, art, independent film, and the importance of promoting all of the above.
Her clarity of purpose is so refreshing, in light of the rampant absurdities frothing from the mouths of Charlie Sheen, aka Carlos Estevez, and John Galliano, to name a few...

Bigot Mothers Suck!

I suddenly feel compelled to share a story that popped into my head as I was digging for a NOTABLE QUOTE for the sidebar of this here blog.

It was a parenting situation, which haunts me still, four years after the fact.
Instead of correcting the ignorant and hurtful comments of a fellow parent, I sat quietly - numb, in fact.  The remarks were made in the waiting room of a ballet class for toddlers. Picture a suburban New York children's dance school: A florescent-lit hallway the size of a McMansion walk-in closet, crammed with rickety folding chairs and a video monitor on which we could view our prancing darlings, over take-out lattes. We sat together, the mommies and I, for an hour every Saturday morning, the summer my big girl was four. Let me explain that, out of fifteen ladies, there was only one with whom I felt some connection. Her name was Jackie. She was Korean, her husband was Italian American, their little girl was sweet and lovely. They had moved from the city to nearby Bergen County, NJ, to be closer to grandparents. The rest of the ladies were pretty unremarkable. Except for one: I'll call her Crissy. She was fancy, with an impeccable French manicure, blown out long dark tresses, and a pearl white Escalade, in which she drove her two princesses with soap opera star names to every extra-curricular activity imaginable. We heard all about it, every Saturday, with no means of escape.

One Saturday, Crissy chooses to regale us with the details of a day she had recently spent in the city, taking the girls to see The Lion King on Broadway. Front row seats.
"After the show, the girls were so wiped out they fell asleep in the car. And as I'm driving toward the West Side Highway I almost got into an accident with this black guy driving a Porsche Cayenne. The fucking guy almost killed us," she says. "He probably had his radio on so loud he couldn't tell what was going on... The drug dealers are taking over the city, I tell you. I hate going in with the kids anymore. It's so dangerous!"
Do I need to mention that there are no distinctly black women in this mommy crowd?
Jackie jumps in: "What makes you think he was a drug dealer?"
And Crissy replies, "Well, how else could he afford that car? He must've been a drug dealer."
Jackie glances at me sideways, stunned. No one says a word. Not even me, the daughter of a successful black man who proudly drove around the streets of Manhattan in a lovely little Porsche 911 (circa 1971) which he worked his ass off in order to afford. What I want to say is: Hey Crissy, maybe the guy was a professional athlete. Or an entertainment industry mogul. Or a neurosurgeon. DUMB ASS.

But I let her get away with it. Caught up in my own confusion. Had it never occurred to her that I might be black? Did she not care whether she insulted me? Where the hell was she coming from?

I will always regret not having spoken up when it happened. Maybe putting it down here will help.

The Oscars Briefly

While I'm throwing in my 2 cents on Awards Season doings, let me add my voice to a question I've seen posted repeatedly: Where were the black films this year?

Let me confess that I haven't seen many films in the past year. So my perspective may be a little narrow. I have no direct experience with any of Tyler Perry's projects, including his new film version of the groundbreaking play, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf". My favorite flick of the past 12 months was the crazy and marvelous "I'm Still Here", starring Joaquin Phoenix, who has my attention no matter what he does because he has a certain fabulousness I can't ignore. The movie was a gas. The premise was provocative, fresh, and very naughty. LOVED IT.

From the narrow perspective afforded by the worn red couch in my living room, having seen NONE of the contenders for Best Film excepting Toy Story 3 (guess why), I couldn't help but notice that Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, and the late great Lena Horne stood out in the program in that weird Beautiful Black Women kinda way. Their achievements and contributions to the medium are huge. But they weren't in any breakout films in the last year.

And then... the grand finale was another feast for the eyes, in that Beautiful Brown Children kinda way. I adored those gloriously multi-culti fifth graders from Staten Island, NY who closed the show. They were fantastic, and their choir leader is clearly a god among men. It did leave me wondering, though, if there wasn't an eleventh hour push by the show's producers to bump up the brown.

I have my fingers crossed, that all the loud-mouthed black artists with something important to say have spent the past year busy in their studios and on location, and that next year's awards season will be flavored with strange and savory fruits.

Esperanza wins!

                                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2JRGv91urY

The Grammy Awards kept me up too late last night. The commercials were long and lame. The musical acts were entertaining, some were even inspired. It was refreshing to see so many live instrumentalists on the big Grammy stage. Backing Bob Dylan, I believe I counted 3 double-bass players, 1 cellist, umpteen guitarists, 2 banjos... A band like The Avett Brothers getting the spotlight... Far out! I am a big fan of real music. That is to say, music performed by humans playing instruments with acoustic qualities.

So it should come as no surprise that I was thrilled to witness Miss Esperanza Spalding win Best New Artist. Not only is she a talented young musician and vocalist, she is a fellow brown girl. I'm sure some critic somewhere has already compared her in a superficial way to Alicia Keys, who is also a talented young musician, vocalist, and brown girl. But Esperanza is thriving in the jazz world. Bringing jazz to a young audience, impressing the old guard with her chops, and accompanying many established artists in a variety of genres. Her mere existence on the scene is exciting. Her success is thrilling.

Go Brown Girl, Go!

Conflict: Black History Month

I have conflicted feelings about Black History Month.
I think it's weird. Of course we don't need a White History Month, because we don't categorize events or eras as white-centric. It's a lot like the isolation of black authors in book stores and libraries. We're still a nation of segregationists : the non-white stuff needs a label and a shelf off to the side.

Black History Month must be some form of reparation. Acknowledgment. A big guilt band-aid. Band-aids help the healing, it's true. But when every theater, every school, radio station, TV network, book store - everyone takes a Black History moment in February, it doesn't feel good. The shortest month of the year, right? It's an old joke: Give the black folks the month nobody wants. Why is Black History Month celebrated in February, the shortest, coldest month of the year?

In two minutes, I found some useful answers in a Google search. Black History Month was initially Negro History Week, beginning February 12, 1926. The week was chosen because it encompasses the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In 1976, as part of the nation's bicentennial celebration, it was expanded and was renamed Black History Month.  My search yielded a lot of interesting points about Black History Month, and the many ways people celebrate and honor black history. I expected my bad attitude to be uplifted, to a higher ground. Black is beautiful!

My little research project left me feeling embarrassed and ashamed. I could write on this for days, but I'm trying to keep it brief. My rant for post-racial America:  This is not 1926. Or 1976. If in 2011 we still need a month in which to focus national attention on black history, then something has gone horribly wrong in our education system, and in the national discourse. The labels and the categorizations are self-perpetuating. Don't you see?

Womanpower #1

I know a handful of women, older than me, in fact closer to my mother's age than mine, who I consider living heroines. They are good listeners. They are creative, and intuitive. They like to talk about books, movies, cultural phenomena, and they like to hear about my children, because they are grandmother age, and they are curious about the paths of future generations. They are a lot like my mother in many ways, but they are not my mother. I love and admire them, and I'm honored that they enjoy my company. They are all busy, accomplished women.

I had lunch with one of my heroines today. She is a teacher of teachers. She loves to learn, and she also loves to share her knowledge. She is full of deep questions, and dares to "go there", wherever "there" may lead, and she doesn't pretend that it's easy. She just plunges in. Today she asked me if I could recommend something literary about racism, for a course she's teaching on Acknowledging Race and Racism in the Classroom (my version of the course title). She'd like to present her students with an essay or two that would serve to open the topic(s) for discussion. I immediately thought of two anthologies I've read recently: Uncle Tom's Children, by Richard Wright, and a new James Baldwin collection, The Cross of Redemption. 

Then I thought about the female writers I admire, and wished that their voices rang as clearly in my ears. I see how lopsided my exposure to literature has been. Reflecting, in truth, the lopsided reality of the published word, particularly in the African American language. I declare! I need to fix this. First, by reading more women's stories. Second, by promoting those stories. Third, by encouraging girls and women to write!

Mothers! Get your girls to write! 
Ladies! Get writing! 
Let's tip the scale!

All I Can Say Today

courtesy of today's New York Times

Spencer Ainsley/The Journal, via Associated Press

Can I Join Your Mixed Race Club?

Yesterday I received an email from a close friend, alerting me to a must-read New York Times article. It's part of a series called Race Remixed. And it was on the front page! Yes, we have made it to the front page of the New York Times, continued on two subsequent pages deeper in the A Section, complete with charts and graphs. I won't synopsize it here, because you should check it out:
"Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above" by Susan Saulny


The friend who sent me the link to the article is biracial.
We met as high school freshman, in 1980, and bonded instantly. There were three of us: another girl in our grade rounded out the trio. Three, in a class of over 700 kids. We talked amongst ourselves about whether we were mulatto, black, or mixed. We tried to fit into a prescribed category, and none of them felt right.

I believe we were the first generation to dare to question the "One Drop" protocol: If you have a drop of black in you, you're black. End of story.

The "African-American" label became popular just when we had grown tired of explaining ourselves.  "African-American" people seemed to bear the benefits of empowerment and self-actualization, without the implicit subjugation of  the One Drop principal. So we used it. It entitled us to membership in a much larger tribe. We were Americans, of known African descent. The label answered the fundamental question of whether we belonged.

My own racial identity has evolved since then.
I believe I've found a resting place with the self-imposed tag "mixed race".  Not because it's easy, or clear, or empowering. It just fits. I identify with white and black Americans. I am Russian Jew, Spanish, Irish, Native American and Black. I don't mind explaining my background anymore, and I am excited to share these great heritages with my children. I am thrilled to know that a group of college students in College Park, MD has made a game of the "What Are You?" question. I dreaded being asked that question throughout my young life. But as a game, it sounds wonderful! Challenging, enlightening, and fun.

I trust that my little brown girls are going to have much less confusion about their own racial identity, because their world will let them be who they decide to be.

Ya Can't Censor History

If you missed the latest censorship nonsense out there, here's a taste:
(excerpted from a brilliant piece by Michiko Kakutani, for the New York Times, linked here. )

"A new effort to sanitize “Huckleberry Finn” comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a reflection of mid-19th-century social attitudes along the Mississippi River."

Why would a professor of English Literature want to convince the general public that omitting the work "nigger" from Huckleberry Finn is a good idea? To avoid offending the reader? To protect our children? Really?  Check the embedded link "slave", in the excerpt above, for an explanation from the hopeful censor.


The blogosphere is full of clever explanations and reactions to this latest bit of Uncle Tom-foolery. Check out mixedraceamerica.blogspot.com and The Colbert Report for starters.


Here's my take.
Every time I type the word “nigger” I hurt. It’s a horrible, ugly word swollen with hideous imagery of brutality, hatred, and victimization. I resist saying it, and sometimes opt for “n-word” because “nigger” burns my mouth and lingers like bile. It hurts the ears too. Reminds us of an ugly past that most Americans (but not all) are ashamed to recall. But the power of words must be honored!  Writers of the caliber of Mark Twain choose/chose their words carefully. Ya can't go around changing the written word as it suits ya, Blanche! Ya can't!  

I have been called a lot of things. Nigger makes the list. Only once, when I was ten. 

I understood the mentality of the white girl who said it, and the superiority of her tone, because I understood the history of the usage of the word. She was not a stranger, nor did she ever pretend to like or respect me. She tolerated me. We hung out in the playground together with a bunch of other kids - all white - on a regular basis. She and I had a disagreement, a conflict, and she wanted to overpower me. She did it with words. My response was loud and profane, and then I ran home. Finished with that group, none of whom spoke up on my behalf.

It was the first time I felt the ugliness of racism firsthand. 
My mother urged me to appreciate that moment for what it was. The girl revealed her true self, and released me from that bogus social club.  My youthful interpretation of our country's racist history helped me appreciate the promise of brighter days. 


More rants about race labels to come.

My Ancestry.com

My father died in 1996, suddenly, and completely unexpectedly.
He was 59. He was luxuriating in early retirement from a successful career, when a massive stroke caught us all by surprise. It's likely that, had he known he was going to die, we would have managed to spend some quality time together during his final days. Maybe some of my questions would have been answered.

We were distant, but not estranged.
I was 29, and had been making an effort to get over our past conflicts. We were on a slow mend.

When my father died, he took his family history with him.
I had known his parents, but I knew nothing about their people. I saw them a total of five times in my life. I loved them dearly, idolized them from afar. They were my black family, my grandparents who lived in Harlem. What little I knew, I gleaned from short anecdotes they shared, and the simple facts my father offered in hopes of quieting my curiosity. My grandfather had worked as a pullman porter, sign painter, elevator operator, and banjo player. My grandmother suffered from glaucoma, but still held a clerical job with the NYPD for many years, and played piano. Every visit featured an impromptu jamboree, their tired bodies rocking and swaying to the old-time tunes they played by heart.

I never asked them where they came from.
Where were they born? Who were their parents? These were black people born at the turn of the twentieth century. How did they experience Jim Crow? Segregation? How did they come to be educated? Were their parents the children of slaves? Sharecroppers? Did they have brothers and sisters? Nieces, nephews? Where was everybody?

Grandma's photo albums held the only clues.
She made notes on the backs of some of the pictures, with names, places and dates. But they were first names. And places like "Woods house, Massachusetts". The folks in the pictures were fair-skinned. Same as my grandparents. So the likelihood of Irish and Native American bloodlines, as referenced by my father once in non-explicit terms, seemed viable. But what were the real stories? And how would I find them?

I am writing a book.
It is memoir, a coming of age story: my life as the biracial daughter of a black man who decidedly disconnected from "the black world".  I have hundreds of pages written, some of which will appear in chapter form somewhere in this blog, as it evolves. My father left a lot of stones unturned, and the writing has been helping me clear my head. I want to understand who he was, and why he chose the paths he did. The writing exposed a huge hole: I can't tell his story without knowing the family details he kept secret. I flash on the microfilm research I did in high school, and the ancient public records that might shed a trace of light on where my grandparents came from. And I've heard that a lot of those public records are accessible on the web site Ancestry.com. It seems like a place to start. So I put aside an afternoon and try to have faith. I imagine I will stumble through a tangle of family trees, produced by countless irrelevant strangers, linking arms/branches across nations; the blissful interconnectivity of all humans. Sprinkle fairy dust here.

Ancestry.com unlocked the answers.
First impression, the simplicity of the search protocol was too good to be true. But after a few carefully crafted stabs, I learned that my grandfather was born in Asbury Park, NJ in 1906. He was one of six children. I learned the names of his parents, his grandparents, and his great-grandparents. And my grandmother's story was just as clear. The trail started with their marriage certificate. Then their death certificates, and birth certificates. Aged, handwritten documents held the details of their lives, perfectly legible, even the complete address of the "Woods house, Massachusetts". With the help of GoogleMaps, I was able to locate that house without leaving my desk. And I unearthed a long chain of cousins, some of whom posted their family trees, ripe with my history.

The stories are making sense.
The people and places have names. The cousins are out there. I will keep writing, and continue searching, and wondering.