Light-skinned-ed Girl

Puppy love and Shakespeare

I was an odd kid--I don't just mean the whole biracial thing--I cultivated weird.  As a teenager I preferred PBS to MTV, and jazz to anything that played on the radio or the "black" music that came on KBOO only on Saturday nights.  But still, I fell in love (many times) the way teenagers do.  Oh, love made me so helpless and hopeless.  So, I turned to poetry.  I thought of this today as I was looking at my bookshelf and saw my old copy of Shakespeare's sonnets.  This sonnet, which I was surprised to realize I still have memorized, was my companion as I suffered through many unrequited loves.

Sonnet 57

BEING your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor sevices to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those!

So true a fool is love, that in your Will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

What are Youtube?: a Challenge for People of Mixed Heritage

This comes from the folks at Mavin and MASC, the excellent artist Laura Kina, iPride, the Mixed Heritage Center, and the filmmakers of Anomaly.  What are you?

More about the challenge as presented on You Tube by Louie Gong (MAVIN Foundation, VP): "What are YouTube?" is posted on behalf of Mixed ROAR (Mixed Race Organizations Against Racism), which represents a groundbreaking collaboration between iPride, the MAVIN Foundation, and MASC- as well as community organizers, activists, professors, artists and filmmakers from all around the country. Mixed ROAR recently got together to talk about the modern multiracial movement. Specifically, we wanted to discuss the following: "where are we now?" and "where do we go from here?" This video challenge/invitation is one way we can keep that discussion moving along.

We invite you to respond to this video with your own. The first ten people of mixed heritage to answer the question "What are you?" will get about 50 bucks worth of free mixed stuff from the MAVIN Foundation. This could be tshirts, DVD's, or books. I don't know for sure, but hey...it's free!

Remember, you can answer the question in whatever way feels right for you.

I can't wait to see what people come up with!

Blogs I Hadn't Read Before about the Multiracial Experience

Check out these blogs about the multiracial experience that are new to me.  I think they're worth a read: A Black White Man, written by a very light biracial guy; and Mixed Race America, written by an Asian-American literature professor interested in social justice and discussing issues of race.

Black Women's Hair: Keeping the Secret

To be a group insider you have to keep the group's secrets--that means you have to know what the group's secrets are.

I was in my twenties, and finally just beginning to feel ease with my place in the black community, but I didn't know the secret about black women's hair.  I remember I was in a mixed (meaning not all-black group) and someone (a white woman) asked me about why my straightened hair looked so shiny.  I said glibly (and truthfully) that I hadn't washed it for five days--it was all natural oils.  "Black people," I explained, "don't wash their hair every day."  (I was a fount of cultural wisdom.)  We all laughed politely.

I didn't think anything of the exchange until some days later when in a conversation (with black women) I learned that I had made a serious faux pas.  It's NEVER a good thing, to tell white people that black people don't wash!  It plays into racist stereotypes.

Oh God!  I felt so ashamed.  I didn't know that this was a secret.  I didn't know.

Now, I read in the New York Times that the secret (not shampooing every day) is no longer a secret.  In fact, it's all the rage with white people too.  The Times reports:

“There’s this whole new breed of young fashionable girls who are getting that once-a-week shampoo and blow dry and just milking it,” said Johnny Lavoy, the owner of Moda-Rey Salon and Spa in West Hartford, Conn. They grew up, he said, “thinking you have to wash your hair every time you shower, but they’re realizing that natural oils are good for the hair.”

Ah ha!  It's no longer a secret?  Can I tell now?

Mixed Race Babies Sent to the U.S.

What can we say about this?  Recently released government documents revealed that biracial children, offspring of black American GIS, were sent to the U.S. after the war.  The Telegraph reported recently:

"Thousands of illegitimate mixed-race children fathered by American GIs were given up by their British mothers and shipped across the Atlantic, according to newly released papers.

The issue of how to deal with the unwanted offspring of the illicit affairs divided the country towards the end of the Second World War and exposed the racial prejudices of the time."

I wonder whether the soldier-fathers even knew about the children they fathered.  I wonder what they might have hoped for them.  There is a part of me that would guess that they would prefer the children be raised overseas.  My father, who joined the service in the late 1950s, believed there was a greater freedom for him, and for his children living overseas--a racelessness that he had never experienced.  I wish we could hear the voices of those children. 

It's Oscar Night . . . and My Guy Won! Hooray!

Real

"One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead." Oscar Wilde

A Budding Obama-ette?

This is quoted from A Wrung Sponge, one of my favorite blogs. Cloudscome is a librarian who writes about multicultural books among other things!

"Second graders in the library (while flipping through Time magazine):
Kid 1: Who do you want to win, the girl or the brown guy?
Kid 2: The girl, because her husband was president already.
Kid 3: No he wasn't because if he was a president before now he would be dead.
Kid 2: No he isn't. But I want the brown guy because my mom wants me to be the first mixed girl president when I grow up."

Thanks for sharing this, Cloudscome! 

Be Tree: Stanford's New Tuition-Free Policy

When I was a sophomore in high school, I told my mother that I planned to attend Stanford.  Her answer was something like: "What is a Stanford?"  As an immigrant, she had little knowledge of the U.S. higher education system beyond our neighborhood (the community college where she had attended as a displaced homemaker and still works).  Of course, she knew of the state university downtown -- her community college often served as a feeder school for those seeking a bachelor's, and probably she had heard of Harvard.  Who hadn't?  I explained that Stanford was like Harvard--only better!  I think it was listed as the number one school in the U.S./World Report college-ranking issue that year.  "Plus," I said, "it has palm trees!"  My mom thought it sounded fascinating, but said: "We can't afford that."  It was true.  My mom was raising three kids on two salaries (a day job at the college and a night-job at a department store).  The two put together still didn't get us above the poverty line.  To make a little extra money, she did janitorial services for a local company off the books.  "Don't worry," I said.  "I'll figure it out."  Luckily, (and of course through diligence and hard work), I did figure it out.  I won close to two dozen scholarships for college--outside scholarships from The Oregonian, Georgia Pacific, the Portland Trailblazers, the Deltas, (thanks guys) etc. as well as university-given scholarships--and that's what made the real difference.  Stanford believed in my potential and gave me the best package of several high-ranking schools.  The yearly tuition at that time was about $5000 greater than my mother's take-home pay.  I did work-study jobs during the year, and had to work during the summers to pay for books (so expensive as lit major), but I graduated with only $4000 worth of debt (most of that was a result of my overseas experience in Salamanca).  When I registered each term, I could readily hand the clerk a "Paid in Full" statement each time without ever writing a check.

I am so glad to hear that Stanford has decided to institute a tuition-free policy for families that earn less than $100,000 and also has eliminated the cost of room-and-board for those earning less than $60,000/year.  I hope that if there is some young man or woman out there who has the same dream that I did, this announcement will buoy them and propel them to reach for the best--no matter what their financial situation is.  Today, I am very proud of my school.  Go Stanford! 

Moleskine

For me, there is sometimes a not-so fine line between small pleasures and obsessions.  I'm not sure which one this is, but: I LOVE MOLESKINE.

Moleskine (mol-a-skeen'-a) is "the legendary notebook of artists, writers, intellectuals and travelers" famously used by Van Gogh, Picasso and Hengingway.  The notebook--which comes in various sizes--has a sleek black cover, buttery cream-colored pages (I prefer blank), a handy accordion pocket in the back, and an attached elastic that seals the notebook (especially helpful when the back pocket is stuffed with clips and notes).

Moleskine pages have the perfect porosity and smoothness for fountain pens as well as regular gel or ballpoint pens.  The notebook lays open flat allowing for the use of the entire page (back and front).  The large size fits perfectly in any purse--and really, the Moleskine makes you a better writer!  I swear!

I am not alone in my fanaticism for the Moleskine.  Whole flickr groups are dedicated to Moleskine art, Moleskine writing, and my favorite: Moleskine hacks.

I carry my Moleskine everywhere.  Each morning I convene with it to write Morning Pages over a cup of coffee.  I can't imagine starting my day without it.

I have been ruined by Moleskine--no longer can I write in any other journal--not even the ones with the snappy quotes and sayings.  It must be Moleskine or nothing at all.

This notebook inspires not just fans but LOVE.  Check out some Moleskine stories at Moleskinerie.

I warn you do not try Moleskine if you are not ready for a lifetime investment in the product.  I buy five at a time--as a writer, and avid list-maker, I go through about two a month.  And they're not cheap.  I used to buy them in bulk on ebay, but I guess the sellers figured they were giving me too good of a deal.  (They were!  Instead of $16.95 USD retail I was paying $10.00 USD including the shipping.)  Now, I have a new secret source--It's a little more pricey, but the best deal I've found.  If you ask nicely, I'll tell you though.  (This is not my moleskine!  Photo by elb the prof)