Call Me Mutt.

#iam4#write4good

Blaxican, mutt, mixed, bi-racial, interracial, there is not a single word that can make up the sum total of me. For the better part of my life I can say I’ve spent more time explaining my genetic background than who I am as a person. I look Hispanic or black depending on your perception with a wild mane of curls that could or could not be my real hair and I sound “white.” I am a general rubix cube to most of the general population, but fortunately I am not alone. I represent a complicated past, controversial present, and for some a fearful misrepresentation of the future. A future where people are worried America will become at a loss of our identity because we are too inter-racially mixed.

I remember first experiencing racism when I was in fifth grade and a fellow classmate of Hispanic heritage asked me if I was going to be a “nigger,” for Halloween. At the age of ten I knew only that “nigger,” was a bad word used for black people and slaves in a colonial time period. I knew this because I spent much of my time in the library reading books on Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglas. At that time those were one of few books I had access to with characters that looked like me, shared my history, exhibited struggle and triumph relevant to my cultural background.

I wanted to ask my classmate why being a fellow Hispanic he saw or only chose to see my black ethnicity. What was lacking in my Hispanic side that he could not identify? Was I not being authentic to that part of me? I can say that my younger self was not eloquent enough in that moment to think on reflections like that and instead proceeded to cry in class. Unfortunately there were no children’s books or young adult books I could turn to that had any characters that could educate me or reflect who I was or could be. I searched for them anywhere and everywhere. Some text, guide, explanation or answer to mentor myself and my fellow classmates on being bi-racial.

Literature was my best friend growing up. We were so tightly wound I read myself right into glasses. Highlights magazine led me into fun adventures and puzzles that stretched my brain. The Baby Sitter’s Club took me through the pre-teen world of friendship and unity. I traveled down the educational journey into Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Beowulf and finally got to read about my first bi-racial character at age 15 in Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’. I got to see racial dynamics with a story crafted around a character who resembled me in some fashion and was not in a pre-Civil War era wearing chains and picking cotton.

I remember classmates referencing the text as a black person book and being unable to have in-depth discussions of what was in the text versus what the text was telling us. I learned early in life that racism was not just a word spewed in hate, banner, emblem or insignia. Contrary to popular belief it wasn’t buried in our past with whips and auction deals selling slaves to the highest price. I was unaware racism could exist in literature and writing. I had to accept that racism was alive and crawling it’s way to the surface of our culture at an alarming rate.

Racism isn’t just a state issue reserved just for the “south” where historically controversial ways of thinking and acts of violence have bred and boiled over from the early 1800′s till now. It’s not just a symbol or figurehead as we saw this past summer when the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina statehouse. Organizations like the Klu Klux Klan stood out proudly protesting the decision vehemently and people argued that it was a matter of familial significance.Nor is it a simple matter of separation that comes with a border separating the United States and Mexico.

Racism isn’t just a national issue, though in the past few years tragedies like the murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown have brought worldwide media coverage and conversation regarding the relationship between race and justice. Even in America where our 44th President of the United States is often referred to as the “black president,” before his formal title of Mr. President or his legal name Barack Obama. Even now as we have contenders for the presidency perpetuating organized hate for immigrants. We can’t simply state that racism is just an American issue.

Racism is a global issue that has made an enormous impact on our society and day to day living as anything else. Growing up bi-cultural in with what some sarcastically told me is the “best of both worlds,“has always placed me at the forefront of discussion regarding race, relationships, and the larger context of what that means for me in the world. About 90% of the time I’m often asked “What I am,” before anything else and the “What,” always referred to my ethnic background. At a young age I decided to combat my struggles with racism through my writing and have dedicated myself to it every day of my life. I sought out writers and stories that I could find some peace in, solace, answers on how to make sense of questions and issues I face on a daily basis regarding who I am.

I come from a military background and I grew up in a small rural country town in the Texas panhandle with a population of less than 2,000 where my sisterand I were one of two mixed families in the area. I was taught very early about a “you vs. them” mentality that I never quite understood but, I got judged for anyway. I lived in the largest military base in the world where I met many children much like myself, they were mixes of several ethnicities and they were often challenged with a series of questions: What do we identify with? Who do we look more like? and why do we sound like this? I often wished I was just one race because then I wouldn’t be picked apart so much and cornered into questions I didn’t always have the right answers for. I lived in a city with one predominant race and culture. There I learned not only was I not brought up in the “traditional” sense of history and culture of my ethnicity, but that I wasn’t necessarily accepted since I wasn’t one full race.

When I began to attend graduate school in my early twenties I held tight to the fact I wanted to create literature and a stories regarding race and relationships for young adults. I was bombarded with the realization when I got to grad school I was the only hispanic in my cohort, the only mixed member, and one of four non-white students of eleven. “Eleven were picked out of over hundred of applications for this program,” our professor proudly boasted the first semester. Meeting with other students in our poetry and non-fiction programs I learned that there was even fewer minorities if any at all. I was forced to question whether minorities are running from the literary world or there was simply not a place for us in it.

I learned that in the literary world we study traditionally revered authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O’Connor, Ray Bradbury, and George Saunders (just to name a few) for structure, format, and their prose. Contemporary and writers of color aren’t historically revered for their writings and those that are had to make strong cases in the past and present for the legitimacy of their work like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Haruki Murakami. Having the opportunity to study writers like these not in the traditional literary “canon,” would benefit classroom’s that are void of culture in student writing. Being able to learn how a writer integrates Spanish or Spanglish would help writers like me who want to have bi-lingual text but no tools how to. It would create discussion and respect for a deeper insight into writing non-stereotypical characters of color.

I discovered racism within my own work when I had a peer refer to my mix of bilingual text on the page as “taco language,”a non-Spanish speaking professor tell me my writing needed more “context,” for non-Spanish speakers. Though it wasn’t malicious behavior, it hurt none the less. It brought awareness to the need for conversation within the classroom in regards to writing multi-language texts and how to read those when you don’t speak the language. I listened to classmates give stereotypical perceptions of non-white characters within their stories and observed with uncomfortable angst to the lack of ethnic characters in their writing. In one class we had a big time literary agent visit. He told us how hard it is to get characters of color brought to the forefront in the mainstream world of publishing.

When I attended the Association of Writers& Writing Programs last year I got to listen to panels discuss race in the literary world and how even in our current generation it is a long battle to get your story on bookshelves. I felt overwhelmed and ignorant of how unaware I was to these issues in a career I want to be successful in. I reflected on what I was attracted to reading, why I was compelled by it and how much of it had any characters of color. I listened to my peers discuss their struggles and frustrations on a dialogue that altogether was a foreign language nobody could translate in publishing. It empowered me to listen to fellow writer's of color seeking to educate readers and writers on the proper research needed to create dynamic characters.

Attending graduate school has opened my eyes even more to how progressive society is in areas of the world, but falls so short in so many other ways as human beings. Race is something I’m passionate about because it is who I am, years of history runs in my blood. Books are many things to people, an escape, an adventure, a learning opportunity,and I want to provide deep, insightful characters that don’t cater to one audience, but all audiences, not one city, demographic, gender or race, but everyone.There is a universal human need for understanding of our place in the world outside of our racial identity and I believe I have the power to create that change in my writing.

My experiences with racism transcends into my writing because I represent more than race. I have battled with both aspects of my culture and have received racism not only from the outside world but within my own people. Fiction writing allows me to tell my story and the story of so many others in a truthful and honest context. I am combatting racism in my writing. I want to help educate and create dialogue through dynamic storytelling about an issue we all live with on a daily basis. There isn’t a portion of the earth that isn’t inhabited by people who are seeking equality of some sort of the other, those of us just wanting to be understood, respected, and seen for WHO we are and not WHAT we are.

As president of my Graduate Student Organization here at school I hope to create a bridge of educated discussion regarding culture in literature and how to bring that to the forefront of our education. We will be holding our first “Literary and Race,” discussion in October, headed by different professors from our department and MC’ed by students. I hope to create a bridge of educated discussion regarding culture in literature and how to bring that to the forefront of our education in/out of school. Junot Diaz famously penned an article regarding the lack of diversity in MFA programs and I hope to help ignite a change for that in the future. I am a human, woman, person, activist, and author for change in race relations in education. I believe humans are beautiful people and we have the capability to exhibit kindness, understanding and respect for each other if we only given the tools to create that dialogue.