Light-skinned-ed Girl

Tyra's Painted Contestants Brown for "Hapa Honor"

Oh really?  Look, I don't watch reality TV--well, except that I do -- in fits and starts -- whenever I get control of the remote and find myself alone -- that is to say I have seen episodes of (but don't "follow" Project Runway, Survivor, and the Real Housewives of Atlanta on purpose.  My A.I. addiction is not included as reality TV.) 

Tonight it was America's Next Top Model.  Love it when I see it except today. In honor of being in Hawaii for the shoot and for the number one Hapa -- the President: she's got the contestants potraying "hapa" with different cultures.  She's painted some of the models brown and is playing "tribal" music in some of the sequences.  One contestant was told she was only portraying the "Russian" side of her "hapaness."  I mean really.

Would she do the same thing if they were in Kenya and said: now we will do a photo shoot of you as a black Kenyan?  No.  

Maybe I am making too big a deal of this --what do you think?

No Difference Between Them: Portraits of Interracial Couples

I was delighted to receive a copy of No Difference Between Them: The Black & White Portraits--a stunning photo book of interracial couples by Robert Kalman.  I was honored to write the book's introduction! 

Congratulations Robert!  And thank you for these beautiful photographs--an essential record of what human connection looks like.

Author Feast Extravaganza: SCIBA

Okay, these guys now how to throw a party!  I had a great time at the Author Feast on Saturday night with Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA).  It was a meet-and-greet as well as an award ceremony -- and really just lots of fun.

And like the wonderful PNBA event I attended in September --it was speed-dating with booksellers for the writers.  This time there were two writers per table which was a delight because I learned about some books that sound great including Liza Palmer's A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents (5 Spot) and Debra Ollivier's What French Woman Know (Putnam). And yes, I confess I was a little star-struck: I ate dinner with Ron Carlson (The Signal) and sat next to Lisa See (Shanghai Girls).  There I was meeting REAL writers.  It was thrilling. 

But the all-time highlight of the night was when Elizabeth Kostova, best-selling author of The Historian and the forthcoming The Swan Thieves and the night's keynote speaker, walked up to my table to introduce herself to ME!  She is connected with the Lois Roth Foundation -- a foundation which awarded me a grant for a work-in-progress about Denmark--for the work she does to support Bulgarian writers and writing.  She had heard about me and wanted to say hello.  She was so lovely and gracious--and I have to tell you it caused quite a stir at my table.  "How did I know her?"  they asked!

That's it for the book appearances until next year's book tour which now starts in January!  I'm excited and nervous and excited and nervous and cycling between these crazy emotions as I think about how it will all go.  I hope it goes well.  Will you come out to see me if I'm in your town and cheer me on?

Miscellaneous Mixedness

I suddenly seem to have the same relationship to blogging as I do to exercising: once I get out of the habit, it's hard to start up again.  How did I manage to post every day in 2008? 

But here I go again trying to get into the groove.  I'm starting easy with some link love for my people:

• My dear friend, award-winning poet & writer extraordinaire, Honoree Fannone Jeffers, has started a blog.  You are guaranteed to like her sassy spirit as you read Phillis Remastered, about "gender, politics, writing, race."
• The lovely, hapa writer, Marie Mockett has a fantastic new book out called Picking Bones From Ash.  You should read it.  We interviewed her on Mixed Chicks Chat this week.  You will be enchanted.
  
• Curly-Hair Queen Teri LaFlesh has a publication date for her book on all things curls: Curly Like Me.  May 2010!  Whoo hoo!
• Mulitracial Americans of Southern California (MASC) celebrates its 20th Anniversary on Dec. 5 in Los Angeles.  Happy Anniversary!

Your Book Reviewer is Not Your Psychoanalyst

I should say upfront that my forthcoming novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, is NOT about me.  Sure, the protagonist is a half-Danish, half-African-American girl who has blue eyes (like me).  Sure, the book's set in Portland, OR (where I grew up).  And yes, I do really have an Aunt Loretta (whose name I am using in the book with her permission). 

The story is not my story.  And the story is not about me.  That's a fact.

BUT, the novel does reflect my "emotional truths"--As a novel writer, I think that has to be the case.  I'm not the girl in the book, but the emotional truth of her experience (as well as that of the other central characters-- the neighborhood boy & the mother's friend) is part of me.

I've been thinking about all of this the past few weeks as the advanced reading copy of my book circulates and the reviews come in.  (It's been nerve-wracking--imagine just sending your toddler or your beloved puppy out in the world without supervision and see how it fares.)

I'm glad that so far the reviews have been good.  BUT, there's a little part of me that wants some new insight into what I've written--into the "emotional truths" that I've put on the page.  "Your book reviewer is not your psychoanalyst," I have to remind myself.  Still, I'd love to do an interview with Michael Silverblatt of KCRW's Bookworm--he's so awesome.  He's able to surprise writers like Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates with his interpretations.

Or maybe it's just this: I wrote the book not for critique--for thumbs up or thumbs down or x number of stars--but to encourage more story.  I think that's what will be most satisfying in the end--hearing from readers about how the story relates to them.

Michelle Obama's Mixed Experience

I loved learning about the story of Michelle Obama's great-great grandfather, Dolphus Shields, a "mulatto" born two years before Emancipation.

Across the blogosphere, the story has met with a yawn, disdain at dredging up a painful history of black women being raped by slave masters, and irritation. Black in America has always meant mixed, folks say.  No argument from me.  

But let me just tell you what made it interesting to me: it was a Story!  Not just an abstract fact of life that most likely there were interracial relations in a family's past.  The New York Times and the genealogist who helped root out the details were able to tell us facts about this man and his life.  What we will never know are his thoughts about the circumstance of his birth, about his relation to living life as a black man when he knew that (if the law had recognized it) he was also half white.