Light-skinned-ed Girl

Bylines Calendar: Writer's Desk Calendar

I just got my copy in the mail today of the new Bylines Writer's Desk Calendar.  Edited by Sylvia Forbes, it's a wonderful weekly planner designed specifically for writers and written by writers.  There are goal lists to fill in ("Write ___ words"), a Submission Tracker, and a wonderful list of literary holidays. Did you know to celebrate "Get Caught Reading Month" in May, or "National Bathroom Reading Week" the second week of June?  Best of all are the weekly stories by writers about writing.  Some of my favorites: Jennifer D. Munro, Maril Crabtree, and C. Hope Clark.  My little piece on getting unstuck appears in November.  Yay!

One Story Then Another

In my reading the past few weeks, I have been seeking encouragement, uplift, inspiration, perhaps even permission.  Nothing fits.  Nothing helps.  Today, I found this quote by abstract artist Lawrence Calcagno:

"As an artist, it is central to be unsatisfied!  This isn't greed, though it be appetite."

I love this quote.  I'm in feeding mode!

Unsatisfied with the short biography of Calcagno I read, I did a little more digging.  I discovered that Calcagno was a great friend of artist Beauford Delaney, a talented African-American abstract artist who began his career at the end of the Harlem Renaissance.

Still unsatisfied, I dug into Delaney's story.

Delaney's story led me back to that of James Baldwin--everything that leads back to the great James Baldwin is good.  Baldwin was a great admirer of Delaney.  In a 1965 essay, Baldwin wrote:

"I learned about light from Beauford Delaney, the light contained in every thing, in every surface, in every face . . .though black had been described to me as the absence of light, it became very clear to me that if this were true, we would never have been able to see the color, black: the light is trapped in it and struggles upward, rather like that grass pushing upward through the cement.  It was humbling to be forced to realize that the light fell down from heaven, on everything, on everybody, and that the light was always changing.  Paradoxically, this meant for me that memory is a traitor and that life does not contain the past tense: the sunset one saw yesterday, the leaf that burned, or the rain that fell, have not really been seen unless one is prepared to see them every day."

I'm sure my search will begin anew tomorrow: encouragement, uplift, inspiration.  For now, I am sated.

   

on nightmares and creativity . . .

i am working--really working--on my new projects: the novel, and the short stories.  and suddenly all my dreams are nightmares--

today, i read this poem by lucille clifton (one of my favorite poets):

telling our stories
by lucille clifton

the fox came every evening
to my door asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.

at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.

did she gather her village around her
and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes?

child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.

copyright Lucille Clifton

Speaking of Invisibility

Today, I ate lunch next to a mother-daughter pair who I longed to connect with.  The mother was Asian and the daughter looked mixed-race.  I wanted to tell them about Mixed Chicks Chat, the podcast I co-host, but I couldn't bring myself to introduce myself and/or give them a card with information about the show.  Seated behind me was another multiracial family, an Asian father and a white mother, and cute baby girl about age 1.  I didn't say anything to them either.  I saw them very clearly as family, but I didn't want to draw attention to a difference that might not be meaningful to them.  And also I was gun shy.  Last week, who knows how I mustered up the nerve, but I did and handed a white woman with a light-brown young girl at the museum, a card for the show.  "Excuse me, I said, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted to let you know about a show I'm involved with.  It's about being racially and culturally mixed."  The woman took the card, but kind of chuckled.  "Oh, well, I'll give this to her mother."  "Okay," I said embarrassed that I had suddenly brought up race and then my assumption that the white woman was her mother was wrong.  "Well," I said, "the show is for multiracial families and friends of . . . " You think I covered enough bases there?  That experience was definitely on my mind today, but also a lot of questions: did they think of themselves as a multiracial family?  Would they be upset if I recognized or identified them that way?  Did they, in the case of the two families today, see any similarity between my mixed-ness (black and white) and theirs (Asian and white)?  Now, I won't know.   

The Primal Scene of a Black or Brown Childhood?

In a New Yorker profile of African-American artist Kara Walker, Hilton Als writes:

"The family eventually settled in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta, which was known for a giant carving commemorating Confederate Army leaders and was a historical meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan. "There was some kind of welcoming reception for my dad," Walker said. "The chairman of the Fine Arts Department had this kind of patrician accent, and he made these boring pin-striped paintings. And there was my dad, all six foot four of him, Mr. Can-Do, much respected in California, and Mr. Patrician talking down to him in a way that I couldn't conceive of: 'Very good, young man.' My dad stood there with this sort of nervous posture." Walker bowed her head and hunched her shoulders, striking an attitude of little-boy defeat. "I've never asked him about that moment. It was sad, because we had just left a place where there was a celebration for my dad's contributions--to the university and the city and the schools. And then, at this place, there were these people just looking at him, like, Hmm."

For many black American children, the primal scene is not the sight of their parents having sex but the sight of their parents being diminished by white condescension. The question that the child asks himself, then, is this: If whites can reduce my father--my protector--to powerlessness, what can they do to me?"

I can't relate to this in my personal experience and I wonder whether that has anything to do with having grown up in an interracial household, and (whether for good or bad) being largely ignorant of what Race was until I was 11.

But I immediately thought of the excellent film "The Great Debaters."  We see the preacher-son experience the "primal scene" when his father is insulted by white workers.  Oh, it seems to me there are many more such instances in literature and in film though I am blanking now.  But what of this? 

I often write about the grief experienced by multiracial children whose families are rendered invisible by standard notions of race--the grief of being suddenly "orphaned" when someone can't see the connection between a mother or father and child.  But this grief seems somehow to connect also to becoming orphaned (left without a protector) in a "primal scene" as Als describes it.  I can't connect the dots yet myself, but I wanted to throw it out there -- any thoughts?    

Kara Walker, Artist Exhibit

I did go see the Kara Walker exhibit at the Whitney this week.  It was such an unsettling experience.  Upon leaving I immediately ate a plate of french fries.  I can't think of when I did that last.  In my little carbohydrate coma, I couldn't pinpoint was so disturbing.  It wasn't until later, joking about how Walker's art made me want to eat that I blurted (it was definitely a blurt): I felt uncomfortable seeing the exhibit with white people.  Walker's artwork is meant to provoke and at the very least illicit a response.  She writes: "I make art for anyone whos forgot what it feels like to put up a fight . . ."

Walker does large-scale silhouettes of the ante-bellum South using caricature and stereotypical images of blacks.  She portrays slave masters and slaves in explicit sexual acts, and other perverse and sado-masochistic images between slaves and between slaves and their masters.  I was the only person of (any) color following the docent's tour.  Two other black women wandered through, but they were listening to the personal audio tour on headphones.  I so wanted to be them and not to be the one person of color listening to the docent give words to the images, right there with all those people, white people around.  It made me nervous.  I wanted to make sure that people didn't think I was getting angry.  I didn't want them to think that I was monitoring their reactions (but maybe I was).  Mostly, I wanted to know what brings you here to this exhibit?  Could we talk about this artwork without falling into the fissures so ready to swallow people/hurt people's feelings in a discussion involving race?  Are you a safe person?  And by that I mean, am I safe with you?  I'd like to see the exhibit again.  It continues at the Whitney through February 3; and then moves to the Hammer Museum in L.A. in mid-February.  If you go, let's talk about it.

How I Write . . .

"Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself."  Erik Satie

Negro, Not a Negro?

Play this fun game at Undercover Black Man.  I got zero right.

Black Mothers of Biracial Children: We Need Your Voices

Many of my artistic role models are African-American writers and artists.  I am always intrigued to discover that a number of these black women are (or have been) married to white men, and have biracial children.  On my notable short list: writer Alice Walker, poet Rita Dove, artist Betye Saar, and writer Jamaica Kincaid.  Nowhere in their work do I find mention of their experiences as black women of biracial children.  (Yes, I have looked, but please someone prove me wrong.)  Rebecca Walker, Alice’s daughter, writes about her biracial upbringing in her memoir Black, White and Jewish.  Lezley Saar, Betye’s daughter, deals with issues of biracial identity in her art.  But where are the accounts of the mothers?  Is it a mothering difference that they have considered in the same way that Jane Lazarre or Maureen T. Reddy have examined?  Add to my list of admired black women artists, Kara Walker, whose solo show continues through mid-February at the Whitney Museum in New York.  Walker who is known for “best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of America's racial and gender tensions” has a biracial daughter with her former white German husband.  The daughter in one of the artist’s video installations. 

In the video, Octavia repeats: “I wish I were white.”  But she is white, isn’t she?  Black and white.  What does this say about the artist’s concept of biracial identity?  Is it something she can recognize or acknowledge?  Last week on Mixed Chicks Chat, [email protected], a weekly podcast I co-host , we talked about the multiracial political agenda (if there is one) and how it has seemingly, until recently, largely set by white women specifically white mothers of biracial children.  I would like to hear the voices of more black women raising biracial children talking, theorizing, and adding to the on-going conversation.  I can think of two bloggers whose stage deserves to be bigger:  My American Melting Pot and That Black Woman.  Both are black women married to white men and raising biracial kids.  I wonder: what are the difficulties as a black woman for encouraging your children to embrace a biracial identity?  What if any barriers have you found in joining, creating or transforming a multiracial movement?  I think there is much to learn from the perspectives of these women.

A Poem for you by Jane Hirshfield . . .

. . . just to remind myself of the importance of everyday and the everdayness' import.

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

by Jane Hirshfield

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—

between you, there is nothing to forgive—

but with that simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Copyright Jane Hirshfield