laborreguita

question:

are there any GOOD mixed-race focused tumblrs out there? i’m hunting the interwebs for good resources. 

start up a blog on my own mixed race experiences?

do i even have time for this?

dear world

or, whoever may be listening. 

1) IDENTITY CRISIS: right here right now. where are all the mixed-race folks who have been adopted by white families but also pass as white half the time? WHERE ARE YOU!? I NEED YOU IN MY LIFE. 

2) i need a vacation. i need to go to another part of the country, get out. i have 50 dollars not counting money that i need for rent and bills. 

3) someone console me while i eat a burger at The Reef, please. 

tarot and mixed messages

last week i went to a really neat event on ‘the power of magic and community’. that was the title and the ideas were neat but i didn’t think they did that great of a job explaining what the connections were between magic and community, aside from what they do and that these cards were how they created a little artist community amongst themselves. 

anyways, 

i’m about magic and cards and loteria cards and tarot and other possible card based magic-like things and thinking that i want to make my own set of personal cards that are similar to this. i’m usually not a big believer in magical things. but what would it be like making a set of these cards? what would my riddles be? what would be the name of the cards? what are the archetypes of my life, my mixedness?

hair

family

questions

retroacculturation - language, food, roots

i think i have some creating to do (and maybe some research as well)

mixed messages: black holes y un choque

i’ve been reading Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldúa (if you don’t already know this book or who this author is, look her up. you should know) and i finally arrived at the chapter called Toward a New Consciousness. Its probably the best chapter in the book, my personal favorite at least. I’ve also been reading various bits and pieces out of Frida Khalo’s diary (which wasn’t ever meant to be read let alone published, might i add). Both have inspired me to create something but i’m not sure what yet, we’ll see. 

anyways, 

Anzaldúa is so on point (as always), especially in this chapter and i found multiple quotes that have helped me to feel validated identifying and being a mixed-race person. Gloria is  so grounded and so centered in her mexicanness, in her chicana identity, I feel embarrassed, ashamed and saddened by my seeming lack of racial and ethnic know-abouts and ties. 

She writes, “Her first step [la mestiza] is to take inventory…just what did she inherit form her ancestors?”

For me, this is unknown territory. A black hole in the lineage of who i am. For this i am all at once angry, frustrated, regretful, and sad. My biological grandmother mental health is in the trenches and she is slowly dying of dementia and years of a broken heart. I feel stuck when I think about this entire idea, because i LITERALLY don’t know. sure, i know the various titles of my various ethnicities, but i dont know from where or when they arrived on these lands or how they got here. 

“Pero es difícil differentiating between lo hererado, lo aquirido, lo impuesto. She puts history through a sieve. Luego bota lo que no vale.” pg.104

We as a distinct racial group have special gifts given to us. We are the epitome of duality, y aunque somos torn, we are transversal, meaning that we intersect lines. “La mestiza constarntly has to shift out of habitual formations, from convergent and analytical reasoning that tends to use rationality, to divergent thinking that is characterized by movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes”. The mixed person seems to have a whole-er perspective of reality; not because we are of some extraterrestrial existence, but because we simply are forced to, it is essential to our survival in a society that would rather box us in than let us be. 

I am both black and white, up and down, rice and bean, yin and yang, push and pull. With this ability also comes a set of challenges: this is what Anzaldúa called ‘el choque’. She writes “la mestiza goes through a a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision” pg.100. I am concerned by the choque more than I am the number of cultural references she mentions. This choque is something I want to thoroughly explore. What is this choque for me? 

some things that come into my mind:

the never-ending “what are you?” question

poc spaces interactions vs. the mainstream world

the mainstream world vs. poc spaces/interactions

adoption: not knowing my bio paternal side, and not a lot about my maternal side but existing as a mixed person, internalized racism from growing up in a white-identifying (read: colonized, now the colonizer) household. 

attempting to intersect my various marginalized identities (womyn, queer, working class born and raised)

esta es el choque. this reoccurring clash. the rambling questions. 

now for some arte. 

Gilman Scholarship draft: Take 2

this is my intro, ya’ll. I found this amazing Ph.D. dissertation essay called “Meridians: mapping metaphors of mixed race identity” by Shane Willow Trudell, which provided the inspiration:

I want to spell something out for you and I want to tell you a secret: my skin in the color of the Hawaiian sands, and my eyes are the color of that coffee you drink to wake yourself up in the morning, (read: Latte). My mother speaks English, the language that many aspire to, but my ancestors spoke a multitude of tongues. My womb was brown but my world is white. And sometimes I feel the pigmentation in my skin jumping out of me. 

THEY BETTER GIVE ME SOME MONAAAAYYYY.