Since my e-mail is on Yahoo, I see the yahoo homepage often.
Today's "news" involved Chelsea Clinton and her wedding wish for her dad (I didn't realize brides gave wishes to their dads on their weddings, nor did I click the link to read what her wish was) and some kind of story-link to the blog My Messy Bedroom talking about the hairstyle men love best (I clicked it, but did so with morbid sarcasm)...
What?
Science was dragged unwillingly in to the equation, and I felt very miffed that it was asserted that it was pretty much a fact that "most men" like long hair on women. That is such a vast and sweeping statement! Most men? Which men? Where? That's like saying "most North Americans like bacon". Yes, it's true, bacon is beloved by many, and has even become something of a pop-cultural icon, which is interesting for a meat, but what about vegetarians? what about meat-eating people who don't eat pork for religious reasons? what about people who have high cholesterol and an anti-bacon prescription (although I am sure that some people who are told not to eat bacon like it anyway... maybe this fits into the metaphor as a reference to queer women who are prescribed by Dr.Society not to like women with long hair but some of us do)? What about people who just don't eat bacon because they think bacon is salty, crunchy and weird? What about gay men, what about men who crushed out on Meg Ryan and Agyness Deyn? The author mentions that some women can rock short hairstyles and "still be sexy" (which of course is the damn truth), and closes with an anecdote about gender binary reinforcement in her childhood in the form of some woman thinking she was a boy once when she was 10, she just can't do short hair ever again. I feel like the end statement was sort of like "Yeah, I guess all those people who don't eat bacon exist, but science pretty much shows us that almost everybody likes and eats bacon here in North America. Y'all should eat some bacon."
And that, my friends, is flawed.
In other news, hot water is back and better than ever at my place. This meant the best damn shower I have ever had, and if any of my roommates had been home and within earshot they would have surely assumed I had an econo-sized jug of Herbal Essences in there with me, if you know what I mean.
Earlier this week, things had taken a turn for the awful and horrific in my world, and now they are starting to look back up again. I am hoping that this upward trend is going to continue, as we are not in the clear yet!
Time to go paint some things.
-Sequin
Showing posts with label hair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hair. Show all posts
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Love that musky art scent
Argh, I just spilled my grubby brushwater all over my bedroom floor.
Shows I'm painting with reckless abandon, but it smells musty and now I have to wash extra towels in the laundry tomorrow. (How often do I thank heavens I don't have carpeting in here?)
But, I'm painting, I'm painting!! I feel really alive! Even when I just talk about painting I feel great. I can rarely ever work on just one painting at a time, I am all about the layering of imagery and intent and complex visual thicknesssss. One I have going right now is a mash of a LOT of detail and abstraction and layers, and then there is a 2 canvas figure painting that actually looks really stunning while being pretty calm but with clashy colours. I'm working with erotic undertones in my painting for this show, and it sure shows how much of a loaded, many-layered and multi-faceted that theme can be for many of us and definately is for me!
Looking at themes in my art, going to counselling apointment today and hanging out with my mumsie this evening really feels like a lot of honesty and deep inquiry. Today for me centred in part around looking at my body image from different angles I have been too afraid to go at it from for a long time. It also centred of course on listening to my mom's experience of going to one of her best friends' funeral last week and how that was for her and all the details of being there, going to the same funeral place that my Nana and Papa's ashes are and really visiting her Dead Folks. It also involved hearing so many beautiful stories of what people remember and how people hold it together. Wow.
My mom is super cool and we ate and had a great time. Talked about our current needlecraft projects, (she knits and i crochet), the kinds of cookies we are going to perfect when we have a baking night in honour of her late friend's life (Aunty was a totally cookie master! Even belonged to a cookie swap club), mom's accidental foray into using that intense Got 2b Glued hair product to "give her bangs a little definition"...I was like "oh, gosh they wronged you,mom, they have a special shampoo just for removing that stuff, it's like spike central! razor sharp bangs!" How could the person assisting her at Cosmetic World allow that kind of purchase to happen in good conscience? I used to use it when my hair was about an inch long when I was 16 because it is a great product to make it spikey and faux-ravery but got too pissed with it practically shellacking pieces of loose hair to my hands. Next time they ought to hook a lady up with some POMADE is all I'm saying.
Going to round up my laundry to get an early start on it tomorrow and then scoop kitty litter. What an exciting life!
~Sequin
Shows I'm painting with reckless abandon, but it smells musty and now I have to wash extra towels in the laundry tomorrow. (How often do I thank heavens I don't have carpeting in here?)
But, I'm painting, I'm painting!! I feel really alive! Even when I just talk about painting I feel great. I can rarely ever work on just one painting at a time, I am all about the layering of imagery and intent and complex visual thicknesssss. One I have going right now is a mash of a LOT of detail and abstraction and layers, and then there is a 2 canvas figure painting that actually looks really stunning while being pretty calm but with clashy colours. I'm working with erotic undertones in my painting for this show, and it sure shows how much of a loaded, many-layered and multi-faceted that theme can be for many of us and definately is for me!
Looking at themes in my art, going to counselling apointment today and hanging out with my mumsie this evening really feels like a lot of honesty and deep inquiry. Today for me centred in part around looking at my body image from different angles I have been too afraid to go at it from for a long time. It also centred of course on listening to my mom's experience of going to one of her best friends' funeral last week and how that was for her and all the details of being there, going to the same funeral place that my Nana and Papa's ashes are and really visiting her Dead Folks. It also involved hearing so many beautiful stories of what people remember and how people hold it together. Wow.
My mom is super cool and we ate and had a great time. Talked about our current needlecraft projects, (she knits and i crochet), the kinds of cookies we are going to perfect when we have a baking night in honour of her late friend's life (Aunty was a totally cookie master! Even belonged to a cookie swap club), mom's accidental foray into using that intense Got 2b Glued hair product to "give her bangs a little definition"...I was like "oh, gosh they wronged you,mom, they have a special shampoo just for removing that stuff, it's like spike central! razor sharp bangs!" How could the person assisting her at Cosmetic World allow that kind of purchase to happen in good conscience? I used to use it when my hair was about an inch long when I was 16 because it is a great product to make it spikey and faux-ravery but got too pissed with it practically shellacking pieces of loose hair to my hands. Next time they ought to hook a lady up with some POMADE is all I'm saying.
Going to round up my laundry to get an early start on it tomorrow and then scoop kitty litter. What an exciting life!
~Sequin
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
some bedtime poems, specifically: weak haiku
1. (En-route to brush my teeth)
fuzzy-eyed wee hours
Cat sighing at her dry food
seafoam crochet blob
2. (What I am pondering)
wrapping mind around
semiotics of clothing:
express myself nude?
3. (What I am wearing)
glorious stubble
mustard yellow capri pants
Stevie Wonder's face
fuzzy-eyed wee hours
Cat sighing at her dry food
seafoam crochet blob
2. (What I am pondering)
wrapping mind around
semiotics of clothing:
express myself nude?
3. (What I am wearing)
glorious stubble
mustard yellow capri pants
Stevie Wonder's face
Saturday, March 27, 2010
My internal weather, and sparkstensions!
I'm trying to get my body's internal clock to function in a more predictable fashion. This involves a gaggle of alarm clocks, agendas and calendars, which I try to make palatable by making damn sure there are kittens and stickers all over them. (Buying books from the Scholastic book order forms was not in the budget when I was in elementary school, so I skipped the Lisa Frank fantasy-fluorescent-ponies-and-pink-leopard-print-notebooks phase...*menacing*: it has finally come to take its course!)
As my luck would have it, the first alarm clock that I got at Honest Ed's was a $16 piece of junk that I tried to reason/wrestle with for 15 minutes before giving up and deciding that it would have been less frustrating if the fake clock face sticker over top of the actual clock face had not been "remove[d] before use". At least there would have been actual numbers, not just flickery streaks suggesting numbers that did not fit together in a way that represented actual times. However, as I am becoming more and more wise to the ways of Honest Ed's, I had bought a second alarm clock at the same time, this one being only $0.99 and having no accompanying instructions, and cryptic buttons on the top reading "Here" and "There". I though it was a puzzle alarm clock, but wouldn't you know it, the thing woke me up pleasantly and on time this morning. It looks like binoculars, and the here and there buttons can digitally "shut" one "eye" or the other with black pixels for no apparent reason, but I don't have to totally get it to be very pleased with it, so finally, one point for Team Sequin Brown.
After Honest Ed's yesterday, I spent several hours cleaning my oven and making cupcakes for our annual sale/customer party/time of awesomeness just days before we take inventory. Then I worked for 6 hours at the store, surrounded by giggles of glee over free cupcakes, the DJ spinning, the customers milling and clustering hungrily at the super-duper reduced items table. It felt awesome to be able to take the time to really help and explain things to folks with questions, amid the mayhem and joy of a jam-packed store. The curly and talented Amanda Marshall puts it well when she sings "Everything is clear when you're inside the tornado/ everything is stable in the eye of the storm/". In all, a fabulous experience, especially since I was so intensely hopped up on sugar and caffeine.
Today started out well, because when I was on the streetcar - running ahead of schedule, might I add - I happened to run into a lovely friend of a friend whose name I unfortunately ALWAYS get wrong by accident, and today I really focussed and got it RIGHT. I psyched myself out for a couple seconds, you know, like, oh gosh, she's so sweet, and indeed memorable, I'm a horrible beast, her name is NOT LISA! Lisa it is NOT! Neurons, reform! no! it's..."Hello, LINDA!" Yessssss! Rock. On. I think the curse has been broken, and I will never blatantly call her Lisa again. Not that Lisa isn't a great name, but it just ain't hers.
Work was great, did a massive post-sale restock, during which I kind of felt like a basement troll because our fluorescent light tubes were acting up and it was dark and cold down there and my nose was running and I always do the hunch-n-flinch dance when I am in the basement because I fear hitting my head on the pipes. Tropical Storm UTERUS blew in from the South shortly after restocking, but since I have been so conscious of times and dates recently, I was aware of what was to come. Apocolyptic PMS emotions also tend to alert me, as well as Violet-Beauregard-style bloating and disproportionately angsty reactions to my inability to find any one magazine at Shoppers Drugmart or Book City that speaks to me wholistically. I bought myself chocolate ginger nuggets and took some ibuprofen, and plan to get into my bed with a book by 11:30pm.
Note to self: begin writing next hit single, "Menstrual Lady Slumber Party for One".
In closing, I witnessed a most delightful and beguiling hair phenomenon upon the head of a very nice customer today, which was that her hair shimmered at me. Throughout her shining black tresses were what appeared to be a faint scattering of single metallic hairs, in purple and even verigated red, orange and gold! I tried to concentrate on the topic at hand, but my hindbrain was trying to comprehend the pretty pretty hairs. Suddenly my whirring mind skipped a beat and there it was, the obvious answer:
WOW. Maybe she's just MAGIC.
I felt reverent, and this luckily gave me a millisecond to get back on track and help the lady out. Once all questions had been answered I complemented her hair and she told me that the glitteries were teeny semi-permanent extensions she had had done when she was in Bankok a few weeks ago. Just when I thought technology was out to ruin us all, a heartwarming discovery is made in the field of beauty salon research that does not involve lasers, depillation or pinching!
I also believe in magic, just to be clear on that.
As my luck would have it, the first alarm clock that I got at Honest Ed's was a $16 piece of junk that I tried to reason/wrestle with for 15 minutes before giving up and deciding that it would have been less frustrating if the fake clock face sticker over top of the actual clock face had not been "remove[d] before use". At least there would have been actual numbers, not just flickery streaks suggesting numbers that did not fit together in a way that represented actual times. However, as I am becoming more and more wise to the ways of Honest Ed's, I had bought a second alarm clock at the same time, this one being only $0.99 and having no accompanying instructions, and cryptic buttons on the top reading "Here" and "There". I though it was a puzzle alarm clock, but wouldn't you know it, the thing woke me up pleasantly and on time this morning. It looks like binoculars, and the here and there buttons can digitally "shut" one "eye" or the other with black pixels for no apparent reason, but I don't have to totally get it to be very pleased with it, so finally, one point for Team Sequin Brown.
After Honest Ed's yesterday, I spent several hours cleaning my oven and making cupcakes for our annual sale/customer party/time of awesomeness just days before we take inventory. Then I worked for 6 hours at the store, surrounded by giggles of glee over free cupcakes, the DJ spinning, the customers milling and clustering hungrily at the super-duper reduced items table. It felt awesome to be able to take the time to really help and explain things to folks with questions, amid the mayhem and joy of a jam-packed store. The curly and talented Amanda Marshall puts it well when she sings "Everything is clear when you're inside the tornado/ everything is stable in the eye of the storm/". In all, a fabulous experience, especially since I was so intensely hopped up on sugar and caffeine.
Today started out well, because when I was on the streetcar - running ahead of schedule, might I add - I happened to run into a lovely friend of a friend whose name I unfortunately ALWAYS get wrong by accident, and today I really focussed and got it RIGHT. I psyched myself out for a couple seconds, you know, like, oh gosh, she's so sweet, and indeed memorable, I'm a horrible beast, her name is NOT LISA! Lisa it is NOT! Neurons, reform! no! it's..."Hello, LINDA!" Yessssss! Rock. On. I think the curse has been broken, and I will never blatantly call her Lisa again. Not that Lisa isn't a great name, but it just ain't hers.
Work was great, did a massive post-sale restock, during which I kind of felt like a basement troll because our fluorescent light tubes were acting up and it was dark and cold down there and my nose was running and I always do the hunch-n-flinch dance when I am in the basement because I fear hitting my head on the pipes. Tropical Storm UTERUS blew in from the South shortly after restocking, but since I have been so conscious of times and dates recently, I was aware of what was to come. Apocolyptic PMS emotions also tend to alert me, as well as Violet-Beauregard-style bloating and disproportionately angsty reactions to my inability to find any one magazine at Shoppers Drugmart or Book City that speaks to me wholistically. I bought myself chocolate ginger nuggets and took some ibuprofen, and plan to get into my bed with a book by 11:30pm.
Note to self: begin writing next hit single, "Menstrual Lady Slumber Party for One".
In closing, I witnessed a most delightful and beguiling hair phenomenon upon the head of a very nice customer today, which was that her hair shimmered at me. Throughout her shining black tresses were what appeared to be a faint scattering of single metallic hairs, in purple and even verigated red, orange and gold! I tried to concentrate on the topic at hand, but my hindbrain was trying to comprehend the pretty pretty hairs. Suddenly my whirring mind skipped a beat and there it was, the obvious answer:
WOW. Maybe she's just MAGIC.
I felt reverent, and this luckily gave me a millisecond to get back on track and help the lady out. Once all questions had been answered I complemented her hair and she told me that the glitteries were teeny semi-permanent extensions she had had done when she was in Bankok a few weeks ago. Just when I thought technology was out to ruin us all, a heartwarming discovery is made in the field of beauty salon research that does not involve lasers, depillation or pinching!
I also believe in magic, just to be clear on that.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Appearances can be deceiving
It all started with Capicola.
Wandering around the 24-hour overpriced grocery store like a lost child with holes in her rainboots, I discovered that Capicola was on sale. HOT Capicola. It hooked me with the little hot pepper "spicy" symbol, and its physical proximity to the sliced Salami, which is my guilty pleasure, but alas, not a sale item this time 'round. After a long day of work with squishy feet inside my favourite crappy-but-cute boots and my mental snapshot of my scribbled budget in my head, I decided to take the plunge and root for Team Capicola - it sounded familiar and I was feeling just frustrated enough with grocery shopping to decide for no good reason not to worry that it might be ham. I detest ham, and pretty much any pork product that registers as pork-ish to my taste buds or stomach. Foreshadowing is not really needed at this point (especially if you are someone who knows that Capicola is pretty much fancy, circular ham) but I will add at this moment that as I left the supermarket and spied a cab in the parking lot with its "available" light on, I was more than a little effing miffed after trying to leave the shopping cart in a spot where it would not roll into traffic with my hands full only to discover that there was nobody in the driver's seat and I had to hobble out to the street in the rain with all my bags flopping everywhere. Empty cars masquerading as ready cabs! Pork lulling me into a false sense of security with a pretty name! I didn't even think to read the label on the back, and only noticed its porcine origin when I was halfway through making my lunches for the next few days.
In other, more wonderful appearances-can-be-deceiving news, I must say that I was more than pleasantly surprised with EVERYTHING about my porno pick du jour, *Suburban Dykes*. Working in a fabulous sex shop has so many, many benefits, including the fact that watching lots of porn is truly part of my commitment to up-to-date product knowledge as it leads to being able to help customers find what they want. This "homework" has lead me to watch a huge range of Adult films, if you will, which I hadn't been nearly as open to in years past. Blah blah blah, I am too stoked about *Suburban Dykes* to delay any further! I was not aware when I borrowed this movie that it was actually made in 1990. Sometimes it is hard to tell with porn packaging, to be honest MANY movies look like they are from 1990...but this one actually was. Nothing makes me more jazzed for life than some totally out-there 90's fashion, and can I say that seeing Nina Hartley in an electric blue lace leotard and black black floor-length tulle skirt with mega-teased hair AND A PURPLE DOUBLE BAUBLE HAIR ELASTIC kind of just made my life. And I haven't even mentioned what her character's wife was wearing, or the fact that their butch third lover actually tries to GRASP ON to the baubled ponytail during some of the action. Speaking of hair, i also adored the full on mullet (not to be confused with a 2009 hipster mullet) being rocked by one of the main characters' neighbours during a sex-on-the-bench-press-in-the-garage scene, so much so that I almost rethought my stance against the naked-save-for-gym-socks look just for her. Almost. Gosh, hair joy totally abounded in this film, and the radiance of the full-n-fabulous bush belonging to the character "Pepper" even made Nina's bordeaux velvet scrunchie in the hot tub scene not only forgivable, but kinda stylin'. Oh yeah, and I guess I could be pressed to say the sex part was okay, but I still give 2 thumbs up to this short and endearing film, and I may have to make it the first piece in my permanent porn collection. PS speckled finish mirror walls with hi-gloss mauve baseboards!!! Just sayin'.
In breif news chunks, I noticed that today in the Metro free newspaper there was a short news story on "The Midnight Knitter", a mysterious person (or people) knitting wee sweaters for saplings somewhere in New Jersey. Being someone who stood in a book shop and visually devoured almost all of a Knit-Bombing book of urban yarn-graffiti-style culture jamming on my lunch hour the other day, I am rooting for the Midnight Knitter and their posse. I just found it amusing that it made it into the paper in Toronto, and that the writer seemed like they were trying to keep a stern face on while writing about it.
Also, Kate from Jon and Kate Plus Eight is on DANCING WITH THE STARS now? She's got the extensions flowing and those funky little ballroom dance dresses. I only know because I bought People Magazine today to look at Academy Awards outfits and Kate's on the front yelling "WHY CAN'T A MOM HAVE FUN?" Reality TV has become a strange loop now, where people attempt to ressurect their fame from past reality TV messes into better fame through other Reality TV. What I want to see is awful Reality TV stars trying to start their own soap operas or game shows or something. Let's get the cross-genre pollination going, people!
Wandering around the 24-hour overpriced grocery store like a lost child with holes in her rainboots, I discovered that Capicola was on sale. HOT Capicola. It hooked me with the little hot pepper "spicy" symbol, and its physical proximity to the sliced Salami, which is my guilty pleasure, but alas, not a sale item this time 'round. After a long day of work with squishy feet inside my favourite crappy-but-cute boots and my mental snapshot of my scribbled budget in my head, I decided to take the plunge and root for Team Capicola - it sounded familiar and I was feeling just frustrated enough with grocery shopping to decide for no good reason not to worry that it might be ham. I detest ham, and pretty much any pork product that registers as pork-ish to my taste buds or stomach. Foreshadowing is not really needed at this point (especially if you are someone who knows that Capicola is pretty much fancy, circular ham) but I will add at this moment that as I left the supermarket and spied a cab in the parking lot with its "available" light on, I was more than a little effing miffed after trying to leave the shopping cart in a spot where it would not roll into traffic with my hands full only to discover that there was nobody in the driver's seat and I had to hobble out to the street in the rain with all my bags flopping everywhere. Empty cars masquerading as ready cabs! Pork lulling me into a false sense of security with a pretty name! I didn't even think to read the label on the back, and only noticed its porcine origin when I was halfway through making my lunches for the next few days.
In other, more wonderful appearances-can-be-deceiving news, I must say that I was more than pleasantly surprised with EVERYTHING about my porno pick du jour, *Suburban Dykes*. Working in a fabulous sex shop has so many, many benefits, including the fact that watching lots of porn is truly part of my commitment to up-to-date product knowledge as it leads to being able to help customers find what they want. This "homework" has lead me to watch a huge range of Adult films, if you will, which I hadn't been nearly as open to in years past. Blah blah blah, I am too stoked about *Suburban Dykes* to delay any further! I was not aware when I borrowed this movie that it was actually made in 1990. Sometimes it is hard to tell with porn packaging, to be honest MANY movies look like they are from 1990...but this one actually was. Nothing makes me more jazzed for life than some totally out-there 90's fashion, and can I say that seeing Nina Hartley in an electric blue lace leotard and black black floor-length tulle skirt with mega-teased hair AND A PURPLE DOUBLE BAUBLE HAIR ELASTIC kind of just made my life. And I haven't even mentioned what her character's wife was wearing, or the fact that their butch third lover actually tries to GRASP ON to the baubled ponytail during some of the action. Speaking of hair, i also adored the full on mullet (not to be confused with a 2009 hipster mullet) being rocked by one of the main characters' neighbours during a sex-on-the-bench-press-in-the-garage scene, so much so that I almost rethought my stance against the naked-save-for-gym-socks look just for her. Almost. Gosh, hair joy totally abounded in this film, and the radiance of the full-n-fabulous bush belonging to the character "Pepper" even made Nina's bordeaux velvet scrunchie in the hot tub scene not only forgivable, but kinda stylin'. Oh yeah, and I guess I could be pressed to say the sex part was okay, but I still give 2 thumbs up to this short and endearing film, and I may have to make it the first piece in my permanent porn collection. PS speckled finish mirror walls with hi-gloss mauve baseboards!!! Just sayin'.
In breif news chunks, I noticed that today in the Metro free newspaper there was a short news story on "The Midnight Knitter", a mysterious person (or people) knitting wee sweaters for saplings somewhere in New Jersey. Being someone who stood in a book shop and visually devoured almost all of a Knit-Bombing book of urban yarn-graffiti-style culture jamming on my lunch hour the other day, I am rooting for the Midnight Knitter and their posse. I just found it amusing that it made it into the paper in Toronto, and that the writer seemed like they were trying to keep a stern face on while writing about it.
Also, Kate from Jon and Kate Plus Eight is on DANCING WITH THE STARS now? She's got the extensions flowing and those funky little ballroom dance dresses. I only know because I bought People Magazine today to look at Academy Awards outfits and Kate's on the front yelling "WHY CAN'T A MOM HAVE FUN?" Reality TV has become a strange loop now, where people attempt to ressurect their fame from past reality TV messes into better fame through other Reality TV. What I want to see is awful Reality TV stars trying to start their own soap operas or game shows or something. Let's get the cross-genre pollination going, people!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
mix! intertwine! blend! combine!
I want to collect up a kind of fountainous list of writings, art, storytelling, performance and poetry coming from the experiences of mixed race folks. I read ravenously, write with my guts akimbo, paint wildly and don't often enough bump into created characters whose experiences of their identities come from often dichotomized places, mishmashes, mixtures of so many experiences but also entirely new ones.
Bein' mixy: there is no single way to describe "the" experience of being mixed, even though I have been asked to, and then been seen as difficult for not being able to answer. A close friend once asked me something about my understanding of myself as a mixed race person as a child, and when I said I guess I never even got a glimpse of the concept until I was older. I just knew I was "different" from everybody else, but there were lots of things that made me different, so how was I supposed to unpack that bundle? Unless they, too, come from mixed ancestry, parents don't often sit their li'l mixy kids down and say things like "mmmkay. So you're 'mixed race' and sometimes people might not get that. People can be racist, colourist, snobby, bring up Tiger Woods a lot, ask you 'what you are', ask you 'where you're from' as a way to mean 'why are you the colour you are', claim you aren't _____ enough, claim you're too ________, and they may frequently dis' your wild hair! But you know what? Fuck 'em, you rock just they way you are." (Although I might give my future little mixy kid(s) a pep talk of that nature, but with more practical tools and less swearing some day in the future when they exist)
At present, my mixy list is fairly wee, but here it is. If you have things to add, please post them in a comment, I would love to check out new stuff!
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo
Colonize This! (An anthology)
Consensual Genocide by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Fireweed Mixed Race Issue
Double Agent - (song!) by Amanda Marshall
...And there has to be more, as these are just things here in my room!
(Goodness, my room! what a great segue into a closing statement of "I need to tidy my room, post haste, if I ever in good conscience want anybody other than my cat to be interested in hanging out in it with me.")
Bein' mixy: there is no single way to describe "the" experience of being mixed, even though I have been asked to, and then been seen as difficult for not being able to answer. A close friend once asked me something about my understanding of myself as a mixed race person as a child, and when I said I guess I never even got a glimpse of the concept until I was older. I just knew I was "different" from everybody else, but there were lots of things that made me different, so how was I supposed to unpack that bundle? Unless they, too, come from mixed ancestry, parents don't often sit their li'l mixy kids down and say things like "mmmkay. So you're 'mixed race' and sometimes people might not get that. People can be racist, colourist, snobby, bring up Tiger Woods a lot, ask you 'what you are', ask you 'where you're from' as a way to mean 'why are you the colour you are', claim you aren't _____ enough, claim you're too ________, and they may frequently dis' your wild hair! But you know what? Fuck 'em, you rock just they way you are." (Although I might give my future little mixy kid(s) a pep talk of that nature, but with more practical tools and less swearing some day in the future when they exist)
At present, my mixy list is fairly wee, but here it is. If you have things to add, please post them in a comment, I would love to check out new stuff!
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo
Colonize This! (An anthology)
Consensual Genocide by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Fireweed Mixed Race Issue
Double Agent - (song!) by Amanda Marshall
...And there has to be more, as these are just things here in my room!
(Goodness, my room! what a great segue into a closing statement of "I need to tidy my room, post haste, if I ever in good conscience want anybody other than my cat to be interested in hanging out in it with me.")
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)