Storyteller | Mixed Roots Stories

The Box Marked Black

from www.damariswebb.com

In The Box Marked Black, playwright and actor Damaris Webb explores her and her family’s adventures and experiences living in Tennessee, the Mid-West and Botswana, to name a few of the places they’ve traveled. Our favorite quote from this article previewing the debut performance in the Portlander: …If we take the time to listen to each other’s stories, that’s going to do more toward everyone understanding and relaxing and accepting each other than having a diversity week.

Damaris Webb’s website: www.damariswebb.com/

Colour Me

Dir. Sherien Barsoum. 2011, 78 minutes, documentary

Colour Me is a feature documentary that follows motivational speaker Anthony McLean as he mentors high school students in Brampton, a city in Southern Ontario, Canada. Filmmaker Barsoum captures McLean’s fluid notions of ‘racial’ identity as he works with the students, and also explores his own family’s origins. Highly suitable for middle and high school aged classes.

Here’s a trailer for the film:

The New Adventures of Old Christine

Creator: Kari Lizer. CBS. Half-hour sitcom, 2006-2010

courtesy flowtv.com

The New Adventures of Old Christine is a sitcom about ‘Christine,’ a divorced single mom played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In the second season Christine falls in love with and starts dating Daniel Harris (the wonderful Blaire Underwood) – making this one of a very few sitcoms at the time to include a recurring interracial relationship. But our favorite blended relationship on the show is that of Christine and her best friend Barb, played by the hilarious Wanda Sykes. In this counter-hegemonic relationship, it is Barb who is wise and tolerant, and Christine who is righteously liberal and ignorantly racist. In episode #48 “White Like Me,” when Barb invites a number of ‘Black’ women to the gym they co-own, Christine excuses her obvious anxiety saying, “I’m not a racist. I drive a Prius.” Barb’s honest-till-it-hurts responses, and the patience she displays in this cross-cultural relationship force Christine, and the viewer, to think twice about their own (mis)understandings of ‘race.’ You can catch episodes on Lifetime. Let us know what you think! http://www.tv.com/shows/the-new-adventures-of-old-christine/

Mixed and Happy

photo from mixedandhappy.com

In the fall of 2009, Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Louisiana, refused to marry an interracial couple because he “wasn’t racist, he just did not believe in racial mixing.” When word spread, many days of angry blog posts and comments followed, but Suzy Richardson took a different approach. She started the Mixed and Happy project. She asked couples and families to send her photos of their blissfully blended families, which she turned into a giant postcard to send to Keith Bardwell for Christmas. Mixed and Happy’s home is now a facebook page with over 26,000 ‘likes,’ and many of the photo submissions are accompanied by stories of how the couples met. http://www.facebook.com/mixedandhappy

(photo by Rob Silver)

Curly Like Me

Cover of Tightly Curly

Curly Like Me is full of tips on how to maintain healthy curls. Author Teri LaFlesh spent years experimenting with – and breaking off – her own hair until she finally perfected the art of loving her curls. If you’d like to get a preview of all that you can learn from her book, head over to www.tightlycurly.com. Warning: you will likely be purchasing some new products after reading her tips, but you will be very glad you did. Purchase Curly Like Me on www.amazon.com