In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
The night I finished reading Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, the wind blowing outside my window ushered messages into my dreams.
I was Annie John, and had ...
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There are several passages in Split at the Root where the protagonist finds herself at odds with being Black in the US. Here is a brief exchange with her teen-aged son:
While in the Michigan boarding school, Patrick perfected a habit of going for walks. Occasionally he asked me to join him, which I gladly accepted for, although he was friendly, he was also a ...
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During my second year at the Academy, the Mexican delegation at the International Handicrafts Fair in Munich engaged me as the interpreter for English, Spanish, and German. The dark interpreter intrigued those who had come to admire Mexican handy crafts. On April 24, 1962, an image of me smiling next to an intricately crafted Mexican silver mirror appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and included a few details about me. I was causing a slight sensation as the only ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
Established in 1858 and perched on a wide hilly expanse, the school was a dominating U-shaped two-story construction. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the minute I ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
I was passing by Vati’s room one afternoon; we still ...
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“Where are you from?” is a simple question. The answer, however, can become rather complex.
When I am asked where I’m from, people expect me to say a Caribbean island, and look at me a bit more closely when I say Guatemala because I don’t look like a representative of the Mayan population. Can I claim being Guatemalan, though? Growing up, my friends were by and large Germans and I spoke primarily German at home. I was the only Black kid ...
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Blame it on the Gemini Mid-heaven or the waning quarter moon in the 10th house of my chart, or both, but fact is that I enthusiastically start a project only to let it lie around, sometimes for years. Then I find it, act as if I’ve made a great discovery, blow the dust off and continue where I left off as if there’d been no lapse in time.
That’s what happened with a manuscript I began in 2005. I had practically ...
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It was embarrassing that I had not heard about the brilliant young writer and MacArthur Fellow, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Yesterday, an African friend directed me to the young Nigerian’s 2009 Ted Talk. At the time she was only 32 but had already received a string of awards and commendations. The fifth of six children, whose father was a professor and mother a college administrator, her childhood ...
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Last night I came upon an article recently written by professor Darron T. Smith PhD. in The Huffington Post’s Black Voices. It underlines issues I had to deal with, anguished and alone, way into adulthood. It’s titled Can Love Overcome Race in Transracial Adoption? and adresses ...
A very well written post by Jane Brown showed up this morning in Adoptive Families Circle addressing a variety of ways that are obvious regarding race in the mind of a child growing up with parents who differ in appearance to it.
Here is what I contributed to the discussion:
This is another great post.
Race is first and foremost on ...
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