Been looking all over for the Natasha Raymond poem by that title. Natasha and I performed it with my friend Elise (menshed in “My Favorite Beatle” below) in venues around Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Natasha, like most mixed race people, got that question a lot, and as a light-skinned black woman I could and can relate.  “What are you?” these inquiring minds always asked her.  The poem runs through her various possible responses: human; a woman; various fractions of Hitler, Mussolini, and Kim Jong-il.  It ends with her fantasy of turning the tables, questioning her questioner, then deciding there’s no need for that, “because I already know what you are.”

I get that question from white people and from blacks.  Bus riders, online daters, anybody and everybody sees me as fair game for it.  Whites are a little more circumspect in recent years about voicing the question, but it still hangs on the hedges of their teeth, behind the roses of their mouths, wishing it could utter itself.

What am I?  I identify as African American, black for short.  That’s one answer.  If you look at me you can see some European heritage, pretty obviously, but no whites in my families’ woodpiles for five generations back.  Unless you count the ones that passed, like my paternal grandfather Vandeleur Rickman.

But that’s another story.

What am I?  If I want to get technical with my answer, I use the term ”high yella.”  Then I’ll talk a bit about the history of color consciousness.  My father’s family and most of my mother’s belonged to the “paper bag club.”  That is, their skins were no darker than your typical grocery bag.   How relieved June’s and Denny’s folks must have been when they found each other, two properly pale people.   Yes, they loved one another, but the main thing was that they’d have paper bag babies.  But my middle sister, Julie, was born darker than either of them, darker than me; she was saved from ostracism only by her “good” hair.  Then, when I was six years old and she was four, I cut it all off her head.

That’s also another story.  I’ve already written and sold it.  It’s called “Cruel Sistah,” and they reprinted it in the Year’s Best Fantasy #19.

What am I.  When the dreadlocky man on the sidewalk outside Ross Dress for Less asked me that I igged him.  He didn’t want an answer anyways, I could tell that from how he kept on saying the same thing over and over again without waiting for me to reply.

To riff off what I wrote in my first post here, maybe you’ve never wanted to ask that question, because you thought you already knew me?  Or maybe not.  Could be you’re unsure now and always have been.   Could be that unsureness is quite all right with you.

What am I?  I am beyond what, and way, way into who.

And this is my last post.  If you don’t know me by now, you will never, never, never know me.  Woo-oo-oo.

Thank you, Tempest, and thank you everyone who has commented me.

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My friend Elise Bryant wrote a play called The Zoo-zoo Chronicles about her life on the University of Michigan campus in the 1970s.  In the first scene, Elise’s stand-in moves into a four-bedroom dorm suite with three white women.  As an ice-breaker, one of the white women asks their new Black (we capitalized it back then) roomie, “Who’s your favorite Beatle?”

Silence.  For three full seconds.

Elise’s stand-in rises in righteous anger.  How dare these strangers assume she likes a Beatle, any Beatle, Beatles qua Beatles?  Corporate rippers-off of Black culture, lily-white wannabe Blues singers, what would any self-respecting Black woman see in them?  After making it clear the answer is “None of the above,” Elise’s stand-in goes on to become fast friends with at least a couple of these women, bonding in sisterhood with them over sit-ins; student strikes; love ventured, gained, and lost; all the standard 1970s joys and perils of life.  What sticks with me, though, is that initial moment of hegemonic attitude and challenge, that culture clash right at the beginning, that careful mapping out of common ground and unacknowledged gaps in the “favorite Beatle” call and response.

Because I did have a favorite Beatle.  Still do.

When I was six I saw the Beatles’ debut on Ed Sullivan and knew this was gonna be something big.  Drew them with my Crayolas playing Gibson guitars when teacher told us to illustrate Kalamazoo’s industrial base in action (Gibson had a factory there).  After college, singing with my rock band, I studied the chord progressions for Beatles’ songs like “Yes It Is,” then stole them and wrote my own.

Why?  Was it because I wanted to be white?  No.

Because they were good.

It’s not inconceivable that whites sometimes admire and emulate the cultures of people of color.  And sometimes it works  the other way.  Sometimes it’s not a matter of being forced to accept the dominant paradigm but rather of identifying with certain of its elements….

John Lennon was my favorite Beatle, right from the start, though it took me till after his assassination to articulate the appeal.  Basically, I loved Lennon for his unabashed idiocy.  The man was never afraid to make a fool of himself.  Audacity wins me over every time.

Is it audacious to take the stance of a cultural tourist towards territories supposed to be well inside the boundaries of the dominant paradigm?  To treat as fodder for my own dreams the harmonies and psychedelic insights of white men given license to rebel?  To tune myself to the excellencies they discovered within themselves almost by accident?

Maybe it would make as much or more sense to expand the meaning of the word.  Say my favorite Beatle is Michael Jackson.   Or Prince.  Or Sly Stone, or George Clinton, or Jimi Hendrix, or any of the other small-b-black rockers trampling down marketing categories with gorgeous unconcern.  Ya think?

Who’s your favorite Beatle?

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Today is Octavia E. Butler’s birthday.  If she were still alive, she’d be 62 and awesome.  She wrote science fiction and fantasy, and one of her aims was to change the world with it.  I think she did.  I think she still does.

I was privileged to be Octavia’s friend, to know her and hang with her during the last years of her life.  I went shopping with her, ate at (vegetarian) restaurants with her, attended stage performances with her, sat on author panels with her.  I got me a lot of Octavia E., though of course not enough to make up for her being gone now.

Octavia was pure-D gorgeous, beautiful in every way, inside and out.  “No, I wasn’t,” I can hear her saying in my head.  “You didn’t know!”  But I did know, and so did so many other people.   At the memorial service held for her in 2006, another science fiction author who had met her and been in her presence for only one short hour was in tears as he spoke about how deeply she had affected him.  Another man who knew her in connection with her video interviews there at the Science Fiction Museum walked up to the podium, looked out at the people gathered together, said “Thank you” in a trembling voice, and walked unsteadilyback to his seat. 

People often ask me how Octavia influenced me as a writer.  I tell them that aesthetically I’m much closer to Samuel R. Delany when it comes to what I try to do.  But Octavia did affect me in two ways.  First, she emphasized how important it is for writers to tell the truth.  To find it, figure it out, dig for it if you have to, climb for it, fly for it.  Go where it is and get it and bring it back whole for your readers.  Second, she gave me money.  Over $1000.  And if you don’t think that has something to do with what I write and what I’ve been able to get written, you are not an author or any kind of artist yourself.  And if you are an artist or author of  some kind, you understand the connection intimately.

At Octavia’s memorial service in Seattle in 2006, I lit a candle in her name and poured a libation for her spirit, as is traditional in my spiritual practice.  I brought out the Christmas cards she’d sent me: a mother tiger and two cubs in the snow; Mount Rainier towering above the clouds, just the way she did.  I spoke about her early membership in the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit organization that supports increased representation of people of color in the fantastic genres.  And I repeated her directive, what she’d told me about her membership: “Use me,” Octavia had said.  “Use my name.”

Soon after the memorial service, a some of the many people who she had affected put together a scholarship fund in her name and gave the fund’s administration to the Carl Brandon Society.  The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund has just sent off its fifth full payment for a student of color to attend a Clarion or Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Five writers of color have been able to attend Clarion or Clarion West, the workshops where Octavia got her start as a professional science fiction author and where she taught several times.  She’s having an influence.  She’s changing the world, and I’m using her name, exactly the way she wanted me to.

If you loved Octavia, if you still love her, no matter how brief or distant your encounters with her, no matter if you knew her, rode the bus with her once, or only (”only!”) read her work, celebrate the passing of her birthday today with a smile of thanks.  And if you’re able to donate to her scholarship fund, either by sponsoring Tempest in the Clarion West Write-a-thon so that part of your contribution goes to Clarion West and part to the fund, or by donating directly via the Carl Brandon Society’s website at www.carlbrandon.org, well, so much the better.

If you haven’t read any Octavia E. Butler yet, now’s a good time to start.  Though she’s best remembered for her novels, I adore her short story collection, Bloodchild.  If you’d really prefer a novel, I recommend you start with the last one she finished.  That’s Fledgling. 

Let me know what you think.

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Today is Father’s Day.  So I called my mother.

My mother mostly raised me and my two younger sisters by herself.  Dad divorced us when I was eight years old.  He moved to a town half an hour away, and I rarely saw him, despite promised weekend visits.  The Friend of the Court assessed him $35 a week child support.  He didn’t pay it.

My mother had a few boyfriends, but up till I went to high school at the age of 15, none of them seemed interested in marrying her and instantly acquiring three daughters.  So she supported us on her own.  At one point she held two jobs and went to school.  I don’t know how.

My mother had risen through the ranks of the Michigan Employment Security Commission, from part-time switchboard operator to Executive Vice President, before she married my stepfather.  He wasn’t worthy of her, and he knew it, and he beat her.

But that’s another story, and besides, he’s dead.  Long ago.

We’re talking about today.  Father’s Day.  I called my mom.

My dad answered her phone.

My dad was visiting my mom.  Dad’s on his fourth wife now, a school teacher exactly my age who was out of the state today, taking care of a crisis in her family, so Dad was visiting his.  My mom saw my number on her cell and handed him the phone.  She has always done her best to facilitate relations between Dad and us girls.  Probably why she never sued him for child support.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.  “Hope you’re having a good day.  I love you.”  (Translation: “If you like.  I’ve been cornholed.” Yes, years have passed since Dad fell off the worthy-of-my-anger list.  Smile and nod, smile and nod.  Less effort that way.)

I’ve seen pictures of my dad as a teenager that I thought were of me.  I go by “Nisi,” but the name I was born with was “Denise.”  My dad’s name is Dennis.  My name was his, feminized, and before the divorce I was Daddy’s girl.  Afterwards, well….

I did write him a poem.  Like to hear it?  Here it go:

Dear Father

I’m supposed to hold a job?
 I’m supposed to tie my body
 to your iron clock,
dragged round by the axe-hands,
 cutting me off in pieces,
minute by minute?

 I’m supposed to report and record my impulsions
for your
 leisured appraisal?
I write one word a day.
Guns.  Color.  Voodoo.
 Yippee-yi-yo-ti-yay!

Wrote that back in 1977. 

Thing is, I know I’m not the only woman in the world with an absent father.  My housemate, for one.  Holla if you another.

My father’s father left him when he was quite young, see.  I figure that’s part of how he became as hopeless at loving me as he is.  My father’s father, Vandeleur, moved to Ohio from Michigan and passed as white.  Broken, broken, our lineage is a broken thing, like a thin and brittle stick.

Can anger be sad?  Can anger be dry?  Can anger be charcoal?  Can it burn twice?

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I practice a West African religious tradition known as Ifa or Orisha.  It’s very closely related to Vodun, Santeria, Lucumi, and similar traditions in the Western Hemisphere.

Among the Ifa pantheon are many goddesses.  One could say they are black, as they originate in black Africa.  And at times one could say that they are angry.

Oya is the owner of the whirlwind.  A rushing river.  A copper current.  She is electricity in the air, the crackle of tension as it builds, the sizzle as it releases.  Her name means ”she tore.”  Oya cleans away dirt and decay with her powerful broom.  To quote my godmother, Luisah Teish, she is “a warrior against stagnation.”

Yemaya is the mother of fishes.  She dances on the surface of the ocean, silver and blue and pearly white in the sun and moon.  But in a storm–watch out! And like any mother she is ready to defend her children to the death, stashing a kitchen knife in the pocket of that June Cleaver (!) apron.  Don’t make her pull it out.

Oshun is sweetness personified.  She owns erotic love, money, culture, and the finer things in life.  Oshun is honey and oranges, cool spring water and trilling birdsong.  She is also the vulture soaring high, casting her shadow over what is spoiled and needs work, over all that must be changed.  From her I learned that engaging others with my anger is a blessing, a precious gift I give them.

Some divinities in the Ifa pantheon are asexual, and appear not to have sexual characteristics.  Others seem to embody both sexes, either simultaneously or via different “faces” or “roads.”  I’ve written here about three of the Orisha who are primarily seen as female, but there are others.

Even the briefest discussion of Angry Black Goddesses would be incomplete without mention of the Iyami.  This is a word in the West African Yoruba language meaning “our mothers.”  The Iyami of any community are that community’s witches.  They act in secret to further women’s interests.  They are able to disguise themselves as birds when going about their business.  They are very dangerous to oppose.

Those who follow my tradition believe that each of us is closest to one Orisha in particular, and that Orisha is said to rule one’s head.  Men may be ruled by female Orisha, and women by male Orisha.  In fact, each of us has a father and a mother; the Orisha who rules our head and another of the complementary gender.

This is true of all people, no matter one’s race, origin, or religion.

Do you know who your Angry Black Goddess is?  If you want to find out, you can ask a diviner.

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A while back I saw this comic strip.  Can’t remember the name.  The setting was white suburbia, a family, which as my friend Sara points out “really narrows it down.”

The female lead of the comic strip (let’s call her Wilma) has a black friend of, shall we say, “a certain size.”  Wilma spends three panels hinting around about an exercise class to her black friend (let’s call her Joyce).   Telling Joyce the time, the location, the cost, how much fun Wilma’s having taking it.  “How very nice for you,” Joyce responds, walking away with wobble lines emanating from her large rear-end.

In case you missed it, that’s the punchline.  The joke is, see, Joyce is fat, but she doesn’t realize that about herself.  Poor Wilma is trying to help Joyce help herself, but Joyce is so deep in denial, so far up that river in Egypt, that she simply can’t be helped.

And as I read this I’m thinking, okay, what’s wrong with wobble lines?  This woman looks good to me.  Maybe she looks good to herself.  Maybe she already has an exercise program that she likes just fine.  I do.

I look a lot like Joyce.  Larger breasts, though.  I weigh more than 200 pounds.  I’m pretty sure.  I haven’t weighed myself in three weeks, but that sounds about how I feel.  I’m maybe 5 feet, 8 inches tall. 

At the Y in April, I was on the treadmill, doing my 40 minutes, all of it uphill.  The man next to me asked how much I weighed, and seemed deeply shocked at my answer.  “But you are fat!” he exclaimed.  “And you are always here, working out so hard!”  Well, yes.  I am.  I do.  And I would say I’m in shape.  Round is a shape.

I’ve subscribed for a few years to an online dating service.  I read the ads for entertainment, even when I’m not interested in meeting the men that posted them.   In the singular they’re funny; “Satisfaction guaranteed EVERY TIME,” says Marv’s headline.  There’s a man with the user name “Tumbleweed Heart,” and another whose user name is “Asslicker.”   En masse, the profiles I read are pathetic and provoking.  There are canned phrases one can use to describe both one’s physical type and the physical type one desires: “Slender, Average, Athletic, A Little Extra Padding, Rubenesque.”  I have chosen to describe myself using the ALEP option.  By far the most widely sought qualities, though, are “Slender” and “Athletic.”

Very few subscribers advertise for a specific ethnicity, but there are some of those, too.

Then there’s the men who are asking for skinny black women to email them.  I raise my voice and wave my arms at the computer screen in exasperation.  Skinny!  Black!  They exist, of course, but statistically speaking?  So do microscopically small black holes.

I think black women in the US are far more likely to be fat than women of other races.  Women are more likely to be fat than men; we’re built to store it up, cause we might need it to support a pregnancy.  And in the US blacks are often the descendants of survivors of slavery, which tilts the genetic pinball machine in favor of holding on to that fat for dear life.  Dear, dear, sweet, sweet life.

There are some who want me, right now, the way I am, so round, so firm, so fully packed.   So brimming with dear life.

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While at WisCon 33 I was on one panel that wasn’t going to be a panel.  Cultural Appropriation 101 was supposed to be a workshop.  At least, that’s what Programming asked us to do.  But then we only had your normal panel-length time slot of 75 minutes to do it in.

(”We” being myself and Victor J. Raymond of the Carl Brandon Society’s Steering Committee, plus Cabell Gathman of the University of Wisconsin.)

So we talked some, we took questions from the audience some, we did a couple of exercises from the Writing the Other book I co-wrote with Cynthia Ward.  Also, we made a stab at putting together a glossary.  It’s that last thing I’d like to work on a little more now with you.

Here are some of the defnitions we used during the workshop:

RACISM - A system of advantage based on race.  Unfortunately, racism is not dead.

HONORARY WHITENESS: -I first heard of this term from linguistic anthropologist and Carl Brandon Society co-founder MJ Hardman.  If a white person likes a person of color and thinks that person of color is righteous and good, and therefor like themselves, they may accord that person of color honorary whiteness.  This is usually done unconsciously.

PAWS: -As in the paws given out in the course of the children’s show “Blue’s Clues.”  Somebody who’s extraordinarily clueful about cultural and racial issues has four paws.  Four is the max.

COOKIE - A very public reward for behaving commendably in regards to racial or cultural issues.  Often, seeking said cookie is the secret motivation for such behavior.  (Note: cookies are the imaginary and parodic equivalent of paws; paws are often awarded without the recipient ever knowing they have received them.)

CLUEFULNESS - Of a certain level of empathy and understanding when it comes to the situations of those of a nondominant cultural background, race, etc.  Applied to those of the correspondingly dominant background.  Many of my white friends exhibit a high degree of cluefulness.

P.O.S.E.E. - An acronym of my invention, standing for Person of Southern European Extraction.  Some P.O.S.E.E.s argue that they are not white.

P.O.N.E.E. - My companion acronym, standing for Person of Northern European Extraction.  The whitest of the white; John Aegard is my little P.O.N.E.E.

THE UNMARKED STATE - Posessing characteristics which are seen as “normal,” and thus not worth being mentioned.  In this society, at this time, this includes being white, male, heterosexual, affluent, and with certain physical abilities.  Just about everyone deviates from the unmarked state in one way or another, though some ways are deemed important and others are not.

Here are a few terms that could use definitions.  Try to be smart and nice.

PEOPLE OF COLOR

MAGICAL NEGRO

EXOTICIZING

ESSENTIALISM

And I’m sure there must be others.

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Some people have said they liked my introduction yesterday.  Good!  Stay with me now.  You love me when I’m angry.

Or anyway, you should.  Especially if you’re white, because the fact that I let you know I am angry, well, that’s me being nice to you.  It’s a sign of trust on my part, a measure of the strength of our relationship.  If I didn’t like you, if I didn’t feel comfortable letting you know I was angry, I would treat you the way I did the woman on the bus this morning.

The white woman on the bus this morning.

She liked my hair.  I wore my hair down this morning, so I looked much like I do in my avatar on this site, minus the doll, the scarf, and the waterfall.  The white woman on the bus said, “I like your hair,” and I was prepared to leave it at that.  I told her thanks and went back to the book I had to turn in a review on.

That wasn’t enough for her.  After a minute she continued on.  “I wish my hair was curly like yours.  It’s curly, but not that curly.  When I was younger,” she gave an embarrassed giggle, “I tried to have an Afro.”

“You’d have to be born black for that to work,” I told her, becoming engrossed in my book again.  I didn’t look back up until she got off.  Then I rolled my eyes at the black man who had been sitting across the aisle from us.  I couldn’t see his whole expression because he had dark glasses covering up his eyes, but I saw his smile.

See, this woman had curly hair.  Her hair was curly.  It was short, brown, and curling all over her head.

My hair isn’t curly.  And don’t you be calling it curly.  It was kinky when I had to straighten it to make it look like a white woman’s, and it’s kinky now.

Okay, maybe “kinky” is no longer le mot juste.  I talked about this some with Nalo Hopkinson a couple of years ago.  Since  kinky has come to belong in a brand new bag, maybe it’s time to create a new word to describe the kind of hair I and my two sisters have, and my Daddy, cousins, uncles, aunts, et al.  “Crinky” was the neologism Nalo and I settled on.  Sort of a combination of kinky and crinkly.  Or maybe we could call our hair “nhappy.”  Nappy and happy.

In order to get into the collaborative, playful space where such terms arise, though, I would have had to expose this woman to my anger.  Expose my anger to her.  I just wasn’t up for that.

I have read a bit of pornography.  (No, that’s not a non sequitur.  Come on, stay with me.  Still.)  I saypornography rather than erotica because it often includes words made entirely of vowels.

The most unforgettable pornographic text I’ve ever read is appended to the end of a novel called Whirlpool.  Whirlpool is an anonymously written novel, and the fragment following it is without either title or author.  At one point in the fragment’s episodic paragraphs the heroine’s fifteen-year-old sidekick is asked by a debauched older man in a silken kimono if she’s a virgin: “‘If you like,’ she replied coldly.  ‘I’ve been cornholed.’”

That statement is the essence of smile and nod.

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Tempest said introduce myself.  Maybe you already know me.  Or maybe you think you do?  Or maybe not.

I write, and I’ve been writing for decades.  I’m really, really old.  Always have been, ever since I was born.

My earliest memories are of outrage–

I’m in a crib, and I don’t want to be, so I learn how to pull out the bars.  It gets easier after the first one, to the consternation of my parents. 

My Uncle Marv is saying something stupid about other black people.  I wish I knew how to talk, so I could tell him he’s wrong.

I’m making up my bed with my babysitter and the sheet is not cooperating.  I bite the sheet, and try to tear it, and end up pulling out one of my baby teeth.  Red blood stains the white, but I haven’t made any holes in it.

And this is when my outrage starts to change, when I begin to cook my anger, to season it and control its temperature.  My babysitter says, “Do you think that sheet cares what you’ve done to it?  All you’ve done is hurt yourself.”  She’s right.  Anger alone accomplishes next to nothing.  To change the world, anger needs art.

Cooking is an art, and the process of cooking is a  metaphor for art.  By art I mean focus, practice, technique, intention.  Insight.  Perspective.  Deliberation, determination, and delight in what one can do.  And the self-assurance to trust one’s tastes, one’s preferences, to make choices and stand by them and believe that they are right because they are right, that’s what they are.  They’re your choices, and they’re right.  With this self-assurance, or soon after it has been achieved, comes the longing to share these choices with others, and out of this longing it is possible to develop the ability to do exactly that.  And then the world can become different.

So those are some things I know about myself and my goodness: what I’ve done, what I want to do.

I’ll post here again soon about something else.

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