sarah HANNAH gómez

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My original post on biracial narratives was posted in April. You can read it here .

While I was in California last month, I read Fran Ross’ Oreo , a 1970s farce about a biracial, half Jewish young adult. A couple years ago, I read Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish , which is a memoir of growing up the daughter of Alice Walker and Mel Leventhal. It should be obvious why I picked these books up. If there were a memoir called Black, White, Jewish, and sort of Chicana , either I would be really intrigued, or I would be the author of it. When I heard about Oreo , I was pretty surprised, because I haven’t found a ton of people who are mixed and Jewish. I’ve met one person who was all black and considered herself a Messianic Jew, but Messianic Jews aren’t Jews, so that’s moot. And the only other black (possibly he was mixed; I don’t remember) Jew I’ve met turned out to borderline stalk me, so I haven’t had the best experience with other mixed Jews, and my biracial and Jewish experience is maybe slightly different in the technicalities, because I’m Jewish by adoption. Still, a common thread I noticed in these two books is humor. It makes sense, when you consider the similar cultural values and history of African Americans and American Jews, that they would intermarry and that in interracial families and in biracial individuals, humor would come up as a way to deal with and/or explain identity.

The humor in the narration of Oreo works first because the novel is a farce, so it’s necessary for the genre. But the character of Oreo also uses humor as a form of deflection, especially when she is dealing with issues of abandonment, identity, and family. In Walker’s memoir, which I’ll admit is not super fresh in my mind at the moment, she also uses humor as a way to assuage her mixed feelings about the way her parents raised her. Since styles of humor are so based on nationality, language, culture, race, and ethnicity, using humor in these narratives also defines who will be the best audience for the book. Oreo’s black mother has a Jewish fetish, and the book is peppered with enough Yiddish that it’s not just common Americanisms that come from Yiddish, but it’s full of things that you would have to be Jewish to understand. At the same time, it also uses slang and jargon rooted in the black seventies experience, which could possibly alienate the same group it just brought in with the Yiddish. The fact that the book lies in two literary and linguistic ghettos could either broaden or shrink its possibilities for a receptive audience. Then again, Jewish humor at least is commonly seen and understood at least by American audiences, since Hollywood and vaudeville are rooted in American Judaism, which means that the general American public is at least somewhat familiar with the style.

That’s another common thread in these two books, though I think a lot of it is just chance. Both protagonists, even though one is fictional and one is not, have divorced or separated parents. Coming from “broken homes,” I noticed that both protagonists identify more with their black families and parents (who in both books do the majority of child rearing) but also do not want to be seen as just black.

In my own experience, and in Walker’s and Oreo’s, the discovery and formation of racial identity as a mixed person rather as one or the other are shaped by, or the young women try to shape them through, sexual experiences. Both women have what would probably be seen as unorthodox or non-traditional sexual lifestyles and habits. Since sexual identity and experience do much to shape anyone’s identity, I can see why this would play a huge role in a narrative about being biracial, because personal identity doesn’t always go with outward appearance, and that leads to issues of fetishization, exoticization, or just plain confusion. The men and women that Oreo and Walker sleep with have various ideas of what kind of person Oreo and Walker are, and both books deal in part with trying to find a partner that understands, or at least acknowledges, that mixed is not the same as white, not the same as black, and not the same as Jewish.

In my own life I’ve seen how men assume that I’m African American, and I respond incorrectly to their social cues because they are not part of my life experience. I’ve seen Jewish guys treat me as an exotic piece that they can still bring home to Mom. I’ve been too white or too Jewish for Mexican guys, too Mexican for white guys, too hipster for black guys, whatever. Many biracial or racial narratives deal with being not enough of something, but I think when it comes to sexual experience and romantic relationships, often the problem is being too much of something, not too little.

Even though my age and lack of lots of experience in African American culture kept me from totally feeling like an insider when I read Oreo , I still felt it was a really positive contribution to the biracial canon, and I’m so glad that NPR did a story on it and that Harryette Mullen edited a new edition of it so that I could discover it. Humor is a really good way to illustrate to non-mixed people how complicated the mixed experience is, while sexual experiences are a very honest and true-to-life display of the limitations and struggles of mixed young people becoming adults.

Next in this series I’ll probably talk about The Latte Rebellion , but after that I really need to do some digging to find other books about the biracial experience.

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Today, at least, there are 175 books on my to-read list. Since that’s a lot of books, I usually come up with a summer shortlist of the books I’m planning on reading the soonest. Some of these are books I’m just too excited for, others are books I already have out from the library and so I feel obligated to read them, some are because I feel like I need to read grown up books before I spend the next three years engrossed in children’s and YA lit, and others are just because I think they’ll be good prep for graduate school particularly because they are children’s and YA, and especially because they are “diverse,” meaning that they either feature or are written by PoC or LBGT people. I’m also on the lookout for more biracial literature, and I keep meaning to do a second post on the subject, this time about the humor approach to biracial narratives. I’ll work on that, and on more love letters to my favorite things in Tucson.

So here’s my shortlist, in no particular order, along with the main reason for moving them up to the shortlist.

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent – An anthropological history of the nerd? Oh, yes. I’ve actually already started reading this one, so I’m sort of cheating by putting it on this list. Seeing Stars by Diane Hammond – Because I already have it out from the library, and it looked interesting, and probably I read a review of it somewhere. The Three Incestuous Sisters by Audrey Niffenegger – Because I already have it out from the library, but also because I really love the way she does literary speculative fiction. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler – Again, lately I’m really interested in speculative fiction. Plus, I loved Kindred . Plus, it’s nice to know that all sci-fi and fantasy is not white. The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure – Because the second I heard about this book, I needed to read it, because I was absolutely obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child. The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher – Because I just discovered food writing, and it’s amazing. Food Matters by Mark Bittman – See above. Also, I have it out from the library. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker – Got it from the library. Diversity. Literary theory I’m not yet familiar with. Can’t wait, even though Walker kind of scares me a little. The Great Night by Chris Adrian – Retelling of Shakespeare? Yes, please. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn – Because my knowledge of American history is pitiful and Palin-esque, thanks to my being a terrible student of history (I blame the crappy way it’s taught in the US, with nothing but rote memorization at the expense of actual engagement) and having bad teachers. Also, diversity points? Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway – Because I think it’s time I read more of the authors I really enjoyed in my American lit class last summer. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz – Because I’ve been meaning to read this ever since I finished Drown . Also, diversity! Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell – Because if I take any longer to start reading that, I’ll have to read Justine again, and then I’ll never finish the Alexandria Quartet. Dreams of Significant Girls by Cristina Garcia – Because I just learned about this book, and boarding school + remembrances of Bloomability + PoC characters = I need to read. The Pleasures of Children’s Literature by Perry Nodelman – Because the director of my MA recommended it, so I think it would be good to read it before my first semester. Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal – I’m so curious. Plus, I got a free copy from the publisher, so I should respect that and read it. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor – Because I bought it awhile ago and it looks fabulous and has gotten great reviews. And again, speculative fiction by a non-white writer is hard to find. Plus, it’s YA.

There is a link on the right to my full to-read list.

If you want to diversify your reading, you should do so, because that’s awesome. Plus, you can enter this giveaway at Diversity in YA , where Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo are doing fabulous, fabulous things for better representation in YA novels. This summer they’re holding a reading challenge. I can’t wait to join their ranks when I’ve published a novel.

Summer is my favorite time of the year, even though 108-degree temperatures are not fun. Summer evenings in Tucson are beautiful, and this year there aren’t even any junebugs to ruin it (although the fact that they are nowhere to be seen is probably indication of some awful climate change issue). I love summer, and usually it’s characterized by a feeling of renewal, relief, and regained stamina for my writing. Usually it involves international, or at least transcontinental, travel. Usually it involves supplementing my education with summer school or enrichment of some kind, like swim team when I was young or surrealism classes at the Poetry Center when I was in college.

This summer isn’t bad, but it’s certainly not magical or refreshing in the way I’m used to. First, it’s not summer vacation. It’s just summer the season, and I’ve been out of school for six months, and I’m still just a working stiff. Still working various part-time jobs, but I’m actually really enjoying my main job. This is surprising to me, because my main job is teaching, and I’ve always insisted that I will never be a teacher. But not only do I like it, but I’m finding curriculum planning to be awesome, and I now know that teaching middle or high school (or even community college, since what I’m teaching now is a high school program at the community college) is a viable backup option for me that I might actually be decent at.

Still, the fact that I teach all day and then go work in an office doing administrative tasks means that I feel impossibly grown up and like the magic of summer is lost to me. Where are the dusk breezes? Where are the poems? Where are the new friends? Where are the mentors? Where are the airplanes? Where is the currency conversion? I’ve traded those things for paychecks, happy hour with coworkers, time with my family, podcasts, and mornings at the gym. I’m early to bed, early to rise. I cook food and eat dinner alone. I cross stitch and watch DVDs from Netflix. And mostly, I like it.

It strikes me this summer that even though I thought I would leave everything from high school behind, pretty much the only people I remain close with, and who I see myself being lifelong friends with, are people I went to high school with and people who live far away because I only know them from summer programs. These people are my life and my summer. In many ways I feel as if my life started in January, after college graduation, and I don’t really dwell on anything that happened before. I like living my life this adult way, but it’s also exhausting, and now I really can’t wait for September. Small bouts of adulthood before the real thing in a few years seems like a good way to go.

the belzhar

february reading in review

what else i’m up to, and where

the walls around us

i accidentally secretly watched the entire twilight saga

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