This Sunday I had the pleasure of participating in a mini-writer’s retreat presented by the wonderful Poets and Writers organization. At one point we had to tell the group something about ourselves. One of the writers said that she had no community. Later on talking with her about what it means to have and not have a community I was reminded of my recent reading of The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century. Reading that book gave me a sense of being part of an expansive and inclusive world community. A community that did not exist when I was growing up, a community that was not even a concept when I was a child, a community that was forming itself when I wrote:
tones
she say she don’t like me
say she don’t like the color a my mama
say she don’t like my pop cause he think he know it all
don’t like my brother ’cause he think he fine
don’t like my man ’cause he dumb enough to go for me
don’t like my kids ’cause they look like me
she say she don’t like me
don’t like me
don’t like me
don’t like me
say she don’t even
have to know my name
to know she don’t like me.
The Beiging of America reminded me that although many have so often cut us into fractions, defined us as half of this and a quarter of that and some floating percentage of the other, have made ourselves complete and found a myriad of ways to not only survive, but also flourish. As the writer spoke of why she did not feel a part of any community in the classic sense, I remembered an early poem when I insisted on making a place for my self:
untitled ancestry
i a mongrel
a cross-breed
a mutt
a grafting of cultures
a planet varied
sea to land
calm to storm
wondering in the mirror
from where did the eyes come
why this texture of hair
who saw to the skin tones
and who to the lips
arbitrarily naming the source
of my limbs
my hips
my face
i landless
homeless
being so much a mixture
a couscous of spices and fruits
a mongrel of the comings together
chosen and forced
of so many different ones
a cross-breed that fills the spaces
between rich-dark and translucent-fair
a mutt that has unruly fur
cropping out in varied shades
ears and tail being strangely incongruent
i the grafting of cultures
that insists where love fails
life will persist, thrive, recreate
a planet varied
mountains to hills to valleys
to chasms deep and wide
waterfalls to rivers to streams
to oceans broad
a mélange i
claiming space on the rainbow.
In The Beiging of America the essays are from many cultures and varied generations, but within them everyone can be found. And by everyone I mean not only we breeds, but those who consider themselves mono-racial, those who see us as the exotic, those who reject or accept us because of the part of them that we are or are not, those who know us as family, those who define us as mud, and those who perceive of us as merely human in all our majesty and folly. This collection shows us as various stars in humanity’s infinite constellations.
When I was a child my parents often heard, “But what about the children?” And that question still echoes today as a litany against the mixing, a threat really about what the questioners might personally add to the truths of our being. In The Beiging of America we children have grown into strong adults in the shadows of these calls, able to speak our realities, write the moments of our lives and reflect more than the rainbow of ourselves. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts have compiled an exciting collection of essays that look with wide open eyes at the realities of being mixed race in America. It is not limited to the African-diaspora-Euro-American mixings. It is a collection of essays where the ethnicities of the world are patterned and stitched, creating a quilt of tales of isolation, of discovery, of pain, of celebration, of rejection and acceptance, a multi-colored cloth of reality. It is also the beginning of a road-map on how we can and must move forward in a world where we are becoming more and more of each other’s families, sharing a destiny where we can embrace our differences and soar, or deny our commonalities and perish. I highly recommend this provocative and timely collection.
For a preview click here.
You might want to also look at, and buy, the other important titles that 2 Leaf Press headed by Gabrielle David as publisher has available in their series on Explorations in Diversity:
What Does it Mean to Be White in America: Breaking the white Code of Silence – A collection of Personal Essays
And
Black Lives Have Always Mattered: A collection of Essays, Poems and Personal Narratives