Light-skinned-ed Girl

Help Make The Girl Who Fell From the Sky a #1 Bestseller

Help make The Girl Who Fell From the Sky a #1 Bestseller!  It's currently #64 on Amazon Bestseller list for ALL ebooks.  And it's on sale for $1.99 TODAY ONLY!  You can also get it for Kobo (support indie bookstores!) and on Bookbub for $1.99 too!

The Mixed Experience: Yes, I'm Podcasting Again!

I am super excited to announce that I'm podcasting again.  It's called The Mixed Experience and it's a great extension of this blog: a mixed chicks musings on a mixed-up world.  I'll discuss politics, culture, academia and the arts, and whatever else is on my mind and yours.  Please check out the kick-off episode with awesome debut novelist Natalie Baszile author of Queen Sugar.  My interview with her in Buzzfeed just appeared today too.

27 Authors, 27 Books to Win!

27 authors have banded together to put together a year’s worth of reading for 2 lucky winners. Here are the rules:

Sign-up for the contest by leaving your name and email address below. Every entrant will have a chance to win 27 books.

In order to win as many books as possible, you must add each book to your Goodreads shelf through the links provided below. Click the link and then click the WANT TO READ button below the book’s image.  If you add all 27 books and you win, then you’ll get 27 books. If you only add 2, then you only get 2, etc.  (Note: if all you have done is “enter”, and you are chosen, you will win one book of your choice among the 27.)

The original contest will be for 2 winners; for each 500 entry milestone we will add another winner with a maximum of 5 winners. So when we get to 500 entries, there will be 3 winners. 1000 will be 4 winners, 1500 and over will be 5 winners. The winners will be chosen by random number generation and will be contacted through the email address they provided. US and Canada only.  Runs March 15-22, 2013. (Note: some books may not be available until their publication dates.)

1. Click here to add HIDDEN by Catherine McKenzie to your Goodreads shelf
2. Click here to add SEDUCTION by MJ Rose to your Goodreads shelf
3. Click here to add THE UNFINISHED WORK OF ELIZABETH D by Nichole Bernier
4. Click here to add THE COMFORT OF LIES by Randy Susan Myers to your Goodreads shelf
5. Click here to add IN NEED OF A GOOD WIFE by Kelly O’Connor McNees to your Goodreads shelf
6. Click here to add ORPHAN TRAIN by Christina Baker Kline to your Goodreads shelf
7. Click here to add GLOW by Jessica Maria Tuccelli to your Goodreads shelf
8. Click here to add BY FIRE BY WATER by Mitchell James Kaplan to your Goodreads shelf
9. Click here to add THE WEDNESDAY DAUGHTERS by Meg Waite Clayton to your Goodreads shelf
10. Click here to add MURDER BELOW MONT PARNASSE by Cara Black to your Goodreads shelf
11. Click here to add THE LAST WILL OF MOIRA LEAHY by Therese Walsh to your Goodreads shelf
12. Click here to add THE HOUSE OF VELVET AND GLASS by Katherine Howe to your Goodreads shelf
13. Click here to add AFTER YOU by Julie Buxbaum to your Goodreads shelf
14. Click here to add A SIMPLE THING by Kathleen McCleary to your Goodreads shelf
15. Click here to add KITCHEN CHINESE by Ann Mah to your Goodreads shelf
16. Click here to add THE DOCTOR AND THE DIVA by Adrienne McDonnell to your Goodreads shelf
17. Click here to add WHY CAN’T I BE YOU by Allie Larkin to your Goodreads shelf
18. Click here to add NO ONE YOU KNOW by Michelle Richmond
19. Click here to add THE SHORTEST WAY HOME by Juliette Fay to your Goodreads shelf
20. Click here to add STUDIO SAINT-EX by Ania Szado to your Goodreads shelf
21. Click here to add HOUR OF THE RAT by Lisa Brackmann to your Goodreads shelf
22. Click here to add THE SEARCH ANGEL by Tish Cohen to your Goodreads shelf
23. Click here to add THE BIRD SISTERS by Rebecca Rasmussen to your Goodreads shelf
24. Click here to add THE HEADMASTER’S WAGER by Vincent Lam to your Goodreads shelf
25. Click here to add DEATH IN THE FLOATING CITY by Tasha Alexander to your Goodreads shelf
26. Click here to add THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY by Heidi Durrow to your Goodreads shelf
27. Click here to add THE PAINTED GIRLS by Cathy Marie Buchanan to your Goodreads shelf

 

Roots, Race, and My Dad: My Newest Huffington Post Essay

I've done a lot of writing about my dad over the last 20 years since he died, but have kept much of it private.  I wrote this essay for a news organization but ultimately it didn't fit the series.  But I was happy with the balance in the piece, as well as the small measure of peace I found in writing it.  I hope you will take a read over at the Huffington Post: My Father's Silence, A Kind of Grace.

Mixed Experience History Month 2012: George Herriman, cartoonist

Born in 1880 in New Orleans, Herriman was the son of Creole African-Americans who were identified as mulatto on the 1880 Census.

He grew up in Los Angeles and started working as an illustrator for a newspaper by age 17.  Herriman drew several comic strips (Gooseberry Sprig, The Dingbat Family, Baron Bean) before creating his super popular series Krazy Kat.

Krazy Kat featured a complicated love-hate triangle between Ignatz, a mouse; Krazy, a "kat"; and Offissa, a dog/cop.

President Woodrow Wilson and writers T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst were among Herriman's fans.  In the classic text  The 7 Lively Arts, Herriman was mentioned as the "greatest comic artist of all time."  In 1922, the strip was adapted to a Broadway stage show.  Although the 1920s was the height of the strip's popularity, the strip ran continuously in Hearst papers from 1913 to 1944.

Herriman's ethnic identity was shrouded in mystery during his lifetime--he never publicly stated his racial or cultural background.  On his death certificate, he is listed as "Caucasian."  But his work has been interpreted as a statement on the complexities of shifting identities.

Herriman died in 1944 in his sleep.

__________

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by writer Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience.  Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year's profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.

Adrienne Rich, Visionary, Rest In Peace

I was lucky to take a course taught by Adrienne Rich while she was at Stanford.  It was a literature course focused on "outsider women" -- I can't remember what it was called.  But it was then I was introduced to the very amazing work of Lillian Smith, Audre Lorde, and Frida Kahlo among others.  I will never forget hearing--for the first time--the song Strange Fruit.  This was back in the day and the class crowded around a boombox at the front of the room.  We were transfixed.  Here we were--mostly women--of all stripes and polka dots feeling the pain of the story Billie Holiday was singing.  I can't explain the power of that moment.

About three years ago, I found a collection of Rich's I wasn't familiar with: A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far.

from "For Memory"

Freedom.  It isn't once, to walk out

under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers

of light, the fields of dark--

freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine

remembering.  Putting together, inch by inch

the starry worlds.  From all the lost collections."

It was one of those days when I found exactly what I needed.--Strangely, only a few weeks later I saw Rich at a restaurant in New York City.  She was gracious enough to let me interrupt her family meal to say hello.

I learned so much from Adrienne Rich's poetry. I learned so much from her vision.  She will be missed.

NPR's Summer Blended Book Series

It was a great pleasure to help wrap up the first-ever Summer Blend Book Club created by Michel Martin of NPR's Tell Me More.  If you haven't read these books, you must.  You will love them.  You will often laugh.  Check out the interview here.

NPR Tell Me More Interview Festival Recap & Summer Blended Book Club

  I hope you'll check out this interview I did yesterday for NPR's Tell Me More.  I give a little Festival recap (more on that soon) and help launch the show's Summer Blended Books Series focused on books of the Mixed experience.  And please click "Recommend" at the top of the page if you could!

My NPR Book Recommendations

One of the great things about getting The Girl Who Fell From the Sky published was that it got my name in front of the good NPR Books folks, and I've had an opportunity to do a few different pieces that have aired on All Things Considered. 

My latest one ran earlier this week:  Three Books to Save Nordic Lit from the Dark Side.  Please check it out.  And "click" recommend at the top!  Maybe they'll invite me back if the piece is popular enough--(and guys, it's a paying gig!)

My KQED Reading: NEVER HEARD BEFORE STUFF

I am so absolutely proud of this reading that I did for KQED's Writers Block. This is a reading I had never done before that day in studio. It's actually the text from the published version of a story called "He Runs" which is part of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. But I have NEVER read it this way for presentations. I hope you will take the time to give it a listen below (19 minutes).   ITunes users can access the podcast here. There's also a fun Q&A to read on KQED's website.  Finally, here is a direct link to the audio.