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My husband was not the man of my dreams- by Guest Blogger Kesha Fisher

  • Published March 10, 2014
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He was a single man and two daughters made up my world.  We set off on a quixotic journey, bumping into love and marriage along the way.  Then came the house, the children doubled, and a rescue dog sealed the deal.  I had the perfect family as far as I was concerned.  The children were happy and healthy, and I was married to a man who incited my happiness on a near daily basis.  Our life was filled with love, laughter, struggles, fears, celebration of all successes and deep appreciation for the lessons that came from failures.  It was perfect indeed, until we ventured out into the world, where I was often reminded by curt glances and that my family was not ideal.

I was hanging up a picture of my seemingly perfect family one afternoon, when I noticed how different we all looked from the family of my childhood dreams.  I chuckled, remembering a discussion I once had with my best friend, Eunice, about which of our classmates we wanted to marry.  She mentioned that Azuka was perfect for me.  Her reasons included these facts: he was the tallest boy in class, he generously shared his lunch money, and he had just told everyone that I was the most beautiful girl in Nigeria.  “He wants to marry you,” she said.  Granted we were only nine years old with the possibilities of marriage being slimmer than a trampled on coin, still, the other girls teased, “Ah-zoo-kah and Keee-sha forever,” as they twirled around me in circles.  I grew angry.  I did not want Azuka.  He was shorter than me, easily manipulated by others for his lunch money, and he was Igbo.  I was Yoruba, and as long as I had known that marriage was in my future, I prayed for a Yoruba man to marry.  Although I spoke English as well as Yoruba, it was of the utmost importance that I spend the rest of my life with someone who came from my father’s tribe and spoke all of the same languages as I did.  I swore to God that I would never marry anyone who did not meet such a standard.

Even with an American mother, I presumed my future spouse would come from my neighborhood in Ikoyi or somewhere in Lagos.  He would be used to eating pounded yam and egusi soup without me having to explain why watermelon seeds were used to thicken soup instead of getting tossed out with the rind.  My husband would know.  He would come home with akara wrapped in newspaper, greet me in Yoruba, “Bawoni, Iyawo mi,” and sit at the head chair as I doled out the fried bean cakes to our children.  We would watch Yoruba movies, and laugh at the exaggerated nuances of our people without anyone needing to explain what anything meant.  That was my idea of ideal.

That was also when my world was still so small.  When my parents separated, we returned to America with our mother.  Living in Texas, I learned quickly that not only were Yoruba boys non-existent in the way I expected, the black boys wanted no part of an African girl who at twelve still wore pig tails and ballet slippers to school.  Most of them liked the chipper blonde girl whose clothes accentuated her breasts and high heels sent her soaring so high, she sat alone on a pedestal I could never reach.  Those boys called me African booty scratcher and nappy-headed, and wrinkled their brows to my smile.  It was a special kind of despair, feeling as if a mate of my own kind would never be an option for me.

Sure I was barely a teenager, and my mind should have been far from thinking about love and marriage, but in middle school America, it was all the rage.  Talks of finding mates came with actual discussions about mating.  I did not want to have sex with any one, but I did want my very own boyfriend.  It was after all the ultimate goal of every child strolling the halls of Beverly Hills Intermediate school.  Before math, English or science, everyone wanted to know who was going steady with whom, who so and so liked.  Because of this natural need to adapt to my environment, not only did I want the boyfriend, my very own trophy to indicate my attractiveness, I needed him to also be black.  However, it was the Mexican boys who liked me.  Asian boys glared at me with terrified eyes, and I imagined each one of them shattering into pieces should I even mutter the word hello.  White boys were cordial.  They responded to my greetings with deliberate smiles, yet each one would wipe his hand on his pants after shaking hands with me.

To my surprise, a white boy named Troy stopped me after science class one day, and handed me a note.  In it, he detailed his affection for my dark beauty, my mild personality and kindness.  I was to tick a box yes or no to going steady.  I smiled as I consumed his warm words and by the end, I ticked no.  The letter he returned to me came with colder words, some of which labeled me a racist who cared for what others thought more than my own happiness.  He was wrong about me being racist, but I knew he was right about my fear.  He didn’t understand that I could not be the black girl strolling down the halls hand in hand with a white boy.  I had seen the way other kids treated those girls.  Black boys stopped them in their tracks just to point and laugh.  Black girls stared and feigned disgust while discussing among themselves the beautiful children that would come from the union, and white girls and boys stared without publically expressing their feelings.  After weeks of avoiding Troy in the halls and pretending his letter had not accurately pegged and exposed my truth, I noticed he had disappeared.  When I finally found the courage to ask about him, I learned that his family moved away, and I would never get a chance to tell him he had been right.

My priorities changed with the natural progression from adolescence to womanhood.  I had spread my wings further west, and ended up in California where the black boys were more accepting of my sundry background.  I even dated a couple.  One of my boyfriends was Chinese and two were Latino.  My first serious relationship with a black man produced two daughters and the relationship ended badly.  After two years of dating my new boyfriend, he fell to one knee with quivering lips and shaky hands asking for my hand in marriage.  He was taller than me, extremely generous with every part of his life, and Irish American.  Nigerians call his kind oyinbo, white man.  In all those dreams where I held hands with my spouse, carting our children to and from wherever my dreams took me, I had not seen Kevin’s face anywhere.  Until I came to America, I seldom saw white people outside of television for that matter.  However, the feelings that manifested from my expectations from a good marriage were encapsulated by the love I felt for this man, and his love for me and my children.  He was to me, the perfect man.  He was not Yoruba, or black, but he had come into my life and pieced together all the broken pieces of my shaken world.  His favorite dish of all the foods I cooked happened to be pounded yam and egusi soup, and we found laughter in all the nuances of our adjoining worlds.  I smiled, said yes to the ring and a life with him by my side.  We went to Nigeria to wed and his face replaced the man who stood beside me in all those dreams.

We live in America now, and when I am out with my husband, black men stare.  Some have even stopped us to ask me, “Why him?”  Whites, male and female alike, stare with blatant smiles of approval, and some roll their eyes.  Depending on the black woman, I often think they see me as a self-loather or a martyr who has chosen to stand before a firing squad and accept the hits they would not dare risk, who knows, I am not in anyone’s head.  I only live in a world where my man happens to come from a place that is different from mine, and my hope is for others to find a similar fulfillment in their own relationships.

The reality of a mixed marriage is one that we have had to get used to.  Although we know that being human trumps the differences of skin color, we also acknowledge our dissimilarities.  We have different tastes in music, I tease him about his vast preparations before sun exposure, and he jokes about my long and tedious measures with mine and the children’s hair care.  We fear the bemusement from others when we joke about race, what it means when my folks shift their way of speaking in his presence and how our children have had to adapt to the changes around them.  Fortunately, these complications rarely come into play, so we focus on the good.  We know that our little family needs to make sense to only us, and it is exactly as it should be.

I was not the woman of his dreams, and he was not present in any of mine.  What matters is that our lives and experiences led us to one another.  Melding black and white is no easy task, even in today’s America.  But just as there is a time in every day when night becomes day and day returns to night, there are no seams illustrating these differences.  It just happens.  We know we are not the ideal cake-topper couple, nor do our children match.  He has learned to ignore the looks he receives when his black step daughters call him Daddy.  I have had to smile and shrug off questions about whether I am the nanny to my blonde-haired, green-eyed daughter.  We know that strangers will take these second glances at us and quietly wonder how we came to be, but more importantly, we have decided that our union needs no one’s approval.  So, when the world comes into ours to show its disapproval, I simply laugh and say to myself, “It works for us.”

 

By: March 2014 Guest Blogger — Kesha Fisher

photo-2Kesha is a a married mother of four. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, but was raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Kesha is a published fiction writer, with a focus on female inequality specific to African and American cultures. “There was a time in my life when I felt my experiences were solely mine to suffer, until I started writing. Life then opened up, tremendously.” You can follow Kesha on Twitter @keshfish and on Facebook search Kesha L. Fisher Writings.


Ethnic Man!

  • Published March 1, 2014
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Entertaining Diversity’s flagship one-man show – a fast paced, humorous and dramatic autobiographical multimedia performance. Arboleda’s story has been a particularly influential and entertaining choice of colleges and theaters around the country. Arboleda is African-American/Native-American/Filipino-Chinese & German-Danish, and he grew up in Japan. Funny, intelligent, serious, thought-provoking. Countless standing ovations, unforgettable powerful messages about race, culture, ethnicity, class, gender and religion. 900 performance around the US, in 48 states.

Find out more about Teja Arboleda’s Ethnic Man! availability for keynote speaking events, conventions, colleges…

http://www.entertainingdiversity.com/shows.html


Ungrateful Daughter in Los Angeles!

  • Published March 1, 2014
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“Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girl’s Story of Being Adopted into a White Family…that aren’t Celebrities” in the Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival March 29th at 3pm.

ABOUT THE SHOW
“Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Madonna have adopted black children. How could it not be good? Should you go pick one up? Especially after you see their faces on TV looking so sad? “Ungrateful Daughter”, Lisa Marie’s riveting solo show, examines being a black girl adopted into a white family and how all that relates to these celebrity crazes, the Haitian and Ethiopian ‘orphans’ and the myth of colorblind love.

In the early 1970’s Lisa Marie is adopted by a couple seeking an “Asian-mix” baby and end up with a little black girl whose racial identity is hidden by the adoption agency. Funny and sharp, it is a story that thrusts us into the complicated racial knots of being a transracial adoptee that are so hard to untangle. Especially when your family doesn’t see you as black.

In a rush of electrifying story-telling, spoken word poetry and hilarious, unexpected characterizations, Lisa Marie reveals a sometimes disturbing story that makes clear what it’s like to attend an almost exclusively white, private elementary school; expresses her fierce love for her conservative, Republican, Christian, organic farmer parents and her clashes with the new group of liberal, well- meaning, white adoptive parents that strain her patience–over and over again. Infused with a gentle sense of humor as well as a seething rage, Lisa Marie wonders if she will ever heal from the secrets, stolen histories and unknowns she and so many other adoptees share.”
http://birthproject.wordpress.com/ungrateful-daughter/


The Other Project

  • Published March 1, 2014
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The Other Project is a documentary photography project shared with Mixed Roots Stories by storyteller Rachel Crick.

“The Other Project is a documentary project focusing specifically on the development of self-identity of people across the country who identify as “bi-racial,” or “multi-ethnic,” or who use other similar adjectives to make sense of their racial make-up. One goal for this project is to encourage public discussion around racial identity — to be a catalyst for people to see themselves, despite their so-called differences, and find the commonalities amongst themselves. We are looking for participants of both racial and ethnic diversity for this project. If you are of a multiracial/multiethnic background, or you know of others who may be interested, please contact us.”

For more information about the project and how to participate visit her website www.rachelcrickphotography.com.


My Mixed Race Childhood in the Midwest

  • Published March 1, 2014
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Storyteller Crystal Chan share with us, “My story was published by The Guardian in the UK about my mixed race experience. I hope you like it!”

We like it! Thanks for sharing Crystal!

Check out her story in The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/01/mixed-race-childhood-midwest-crystal-chan


Jumping the Fence

  • Published February 11, 2014
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Thank you, author Maureen Gilmer, for sharing your story! “This book about my family is a true tale of civil rights from about 1800 to 1910 New Orleans.” Book to be released 2014!

 

jumping the fence

“In nineteenth-century New Orleans, Jean Benjamin Esnard and his family struggle to conceal their mixed-race ancestry and pass as white in the increasingly hostile racial environment of the post-Civil War South. Their secret begins to unravel, however, when their son, Adrien, is born darker than his siblings and labeled “C” for “colored” on his birth certificate. As desperation sets in, Jean Benjamin and his wife, Florentine must make the heartbreaking decision to separate the family in order to save it.

In Jumping the Fence, Maureen Gilmer shares the extraordinary true story of early civil rights activists—her ancestors—who stopped at nothing to protect each other and their assets in the struggle against slavery and segregation.” http://www.jumpingthefence.net/


Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care

  • Published January 12, 2014
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Storyteller “Qiana Mestrich is a photo-based visual artist and writer from Brooklyn, NY. A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, her autobiographical work establishes a study of heritage within complex and convoluted visual histories.

She is the founder of Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography History, a blog which profiles photographers of color. In 2012, Qiana Mestrich co-edited (with fellow ICP-Bard alumna Michi Jigarjian) How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press), a book about and by contemporary artist mothers.”

http://www.qianamestrich.com/

Her recent work, “Joseph: A Life in Colour,  A Life in Care” can be viewed here!

Joseph: A Life in Colour, A Life in Care

“Under the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act of 1998, my husband Joseph received photocopied files from the London Borough of Camden documenting the years he spent as an orphan in several children’s homes from 1965 to 1975. Born to a Nigerian father and Irish mother, Joseph remained “in care” under the child protection system in England until 1981.

This series combines select, manipulated text from those documents with my own images of Joseph. Both the photography and text function as character assessments, questioning the inherent misrepresentation of portraiture. The third-party narrative ultimately reveals the social and moral forces that denied Joseph hi birthright to a family, while my photographs show the beginnings of a new one.”


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Podcast

Sharing the personal stories behind the scholars, activists, artists and community leaders whose work addresses the mixed experience.

January 2017 Featured Artist – Nicole Kurtz

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Sharon H. Chang’s inaugural book, Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post Racial World, lays out a blue print that outlines the history of white supremacy and how it has corrupted the way people treat each other, specifically Mixed Race/ Multiracial and Multiracial Asian individuals. She develops an important foundation that provides a glimmer of hope for moving forward toward improving our future world, despite the powerful suppressive system before us. The title might make you think it is a parenting book, and it ... read more
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MXRS Episode 5 – Jenina Gallaway

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