Light-skinned-ed Girl

Light-skinned-ed Girl in Stockholm

A tranquil, COLD day in Stockholm.  It involved leverpostej which is always a good thing (except if it's packed in your lunch box and you're hanging with Americans), and being understood by an older Swede, an antiques shop proprietor, as I spoke Danish to her.  The Royal Palace was closed because "Luxembourg" is coming; the Crown must prepare for its guests!  But still there was enough to see at the National Armory Museum, and the National Museum with the special Toulouse Lautrec exhibit.  And there was a small pause for fika, a close kin to the Spanish siesta, at a charming cafe in the old part of Stockholm.  This little place was the haunt of regulars (Swedes) and tourists alike.

Oh yeah, and what were these guys doing here today? 

Multiracial in Sweden

"The biracial and multiracial children of Sweden, who today number at least 50,000

individuals between 0-50 years old, challenge the Swedish myth of national

homogeneity both through their appearances, their backgrounds and their upbringings.

At the same time, together with the 50,000 adoptees of Sweden, the mixed children are

also showing that it is possible to be a Swede without being 100 percent white, thereby

challenging the segregating division between native white Swedes and non-white

immigrants, which is today so pervasive in contemporary Swedish society." from Blandbarn.

And check out Miss Sweden 2002.  Bet you don't necessarily think of this when you think of Nordic beauty, but there it is.

Malou Hannson, Miss Sweden 2002

Light-skinned-ed Girl Goes on the Road Again

I'm headed to my ancestral home for a few days. This time, the trip includes a few days in Sweden.  I have never visited Sweden even though it is just a stone's throw--now a very long bridge--away from Copenhagen. Usually, my time in DK is full with family visits.  It's all about hygge--more on that in future posts.  But also, I haven't been to Sweden before because vacationing in Sweden for a Dane is kind of like a New Yorker exploring New Jersey for a few days.  You may get all of the Nordic folks confused; but they/we don't confuse each other.  Check back this week with updates and photos. 

Are those Your Eyes? Part 2

"According to ScienceDaily.com a team of Copenhagen researchers has tracked a genetic mutation which occurred 6-10,000 years ago and is responsible for all the blue eyed people you see walking around today."

Armed with this tid-bit from Sardonic Sistah I am now tempted to say when asked about my eyes: "They are my paleolithic ancestor's genetic mutation."

What difference does it make "where" I got my eyes from?  To be clear: I believe I have my mother's eyes.  Though my mother jokingly grumbles that she doesn't get the effusive compliments I do, it is plain that our eyes are the same color (just not set against the same color skin).  However, I often sense that the assumption is that the color of my eyes is evidence of a slave-era rape.  And I suppose it could be evidence--but it is profoundly unsettling to think of this.

Today, I'm going to bank on the fact, that one of the folks on my father's side ended up with that mutation.  And helped pass it on down to me.

Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival 2008: Schedule Unveiled and Registration Open

The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival has unveiled the inaugural schedule and opened on-line pre-registration.

 

 

The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, which will be held at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, June 12-June 15, 2008, celebrates storytelling of the Mixed racial and cultural experience including that of transracial/cultural adoption and interracial/cultural relationships.

 

 

The Festival, a fiscally sponsored project of From the Heart Productions, a non-profit organization, is an inclusive event targeting the growing population of multiracial and multicultural individuals.  The Festival brings together film and book lovers, innovative artists, and families interested in the Mixed racial and cultural experience.

 

 

Today, 7 percent of all marriages are interracial, according to the Census. More than 6.8 million individuals identify as Mixed.

 

 

The Festival highlights include:

 

 

Acclaimed author Rebecca Walker will present the Opening Address for the kick-off Loving Day party, celebrating the Supreme Court decision which affirmed the right of people of different races to marry, on June 12, 2008 at 6pm. DJ Life and DJ Vika spin decades of dance floor classics.

 

 

Hapa artist and filmmaker Kip Fulbeck will receive the Festival’s inaugural award for inspirational storytelling of the Mixed experience during the Friday night Award Presentation.

 

 

Sundee Frazier, recipient of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award, will read from her children's book Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything In It.

 

 

Crossing the Line: Multiracial Comedians (producers Teja Arboleda and Darby Li Po Price), a celebrated feature documentary, will close the Festival screenings.

 

 

The Festival includes author readings by memoirist Lori Tharps (Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain Simon & Schuster); poet Neil Aitken (Winner of the Philip Levine Prize, The Lost Country of Sight, Anhinga Press forthcoming), and non-fiction writer Kim-Marie Walker (Zebras from Heaven: Celebrating Interethnic Relationships) among others.

 

 

The Festival will also screen a series of acclaimed films including: Octavio Warnock-Graham’s award-winning documentary Silences, Yohei Suzuki’s documentary Our Pride: The Spirits of Black Japanese in Georgia, and Dawn Green’s NoHo, PA, a feature film for all ages.

 

 

All the events are free and open to the public.  Pre-registration is strongly encouraged.  On-line registration is now open at www.mixedrootsfilmandliteraryfestival.org.

 

 

Festival partners include: Japanese American National Museum Association for MultiEthnic Americans, Multiracial Americans of Southern California, iPride, and Loving Day.

Brown Sugar Body Scrub

This blogger needs some uplift today.  Here's my cure for the day's blues:

My Blog Personality: Five Things

I am not my blog personality.  What I write here is still a presentational me, not me me.  I blog to ruminate about issues of biracial identity, the Mixed experience, travel and the creative life.  (My website is for shameless self-promotion.) What I blog about is not the sum of my thoughts or experience--just a subset.  So to clarify: here are five things that seem true about my blog personality that are not necessarily true about me:

1. I friggin don't think about anything but biracial identity.

2.  I don't live anywhere specific--but seem to live in the United States.

3.  I am of an unknown age.

4.  I find it easy to talk about my closest relationships like my relationship with my mother.

5.  I don't have any opinions on current events (except for Obama and, now, possibly the Iraq war).

None of these things are true, but they might seem to be if you knew me only through my blog.  I fear I may have developed a generic biracial person as the voice of this blog.  I hope to rectify that in future posts--so check back often.  Now, I'm interested to know what other bloggers out there think about this idea of the blog personality and I want to know who you've created as your blog personality.  I'm tagging three people: if you're tagged please link back and tag three more. Tag: writer Tayari Jones, Erin at Holding Still, and Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge.   

Biracial America as Understood Abroad

I'd love to know more about how biracial people fare abroad.  Like the author of this article from a U.K. Guardian blogger, it seems that non-American black biracial people have a very different notion of what it means to be biracial.  Do they not have to "choose to choose" as we do (at least have had to) in America?  I grew up in large part overseas until I was eleven.  I have always ascribed the "racelessness" I felt before moving to the Pacific Northwest to being a kid.  But my "racelessness" was also due to the fact that I didn't live in America.  What do you think?

A Poem for you by Maurya Simon

If you don't know this poet, you should.  I met her at Djerassi, a wonderful northern California artist colony, a few years ago.  This poem is one of my favorites!

Dedication

by Maurya Simon, from Days of Awe

If ever I had a muse, it was you,

your artist’s hands narrow and white,

your eyes so amazingly blue

they seem to overtake the world

and re-tinge it; your familiar face

always hovering in and out of mine.

A certain violence in likenesses,

and in our differences, makes

you my most solid witness—

and at times you’re the only door

my being passes through, as if

through a curtain made of flesh

that parts us each in two, splitting

us into yin and yang, those forces

eternally at odds, and at one.

There are things to say that we

have never said, and are likely

to forget or softly put away

along with the old arguments,

the jealousies and dreads.

But let me say, if anything,

that you’re my telltale tongue,

my luminous eye, my fountain pen.

I owe you everything that’s good

upon the page, and even my rage

over what’s bad, false, leaden.

If I can claim but one truth won,

it’s that you gave me first what

I didn’t have: another self to love

Unconditionally, and to forgive.

Biracial People: Discovered Again!

Make sure to read yesterday's New York Times piece about mixed folks.  I agree with The Angry Black Woman who insists that it's time we put multiracial identity into an historical context.  Mixed folks didn't just show up since the 1960s.  We're not simply the rage becaue of an Obama bandwagon.  The "new dialogue," as the New York Times puts it, about Mixed experience may be new to America at-large, but we've been having the conversation amongst ourselves for some time now.  It's just that now, folks are beginning to pay attention--as they should.  There is something to be learned from the perspective of Mixed folks about not just race, but humanity.