comp lit and mediaphilia

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.

Posted in books

Tagged authors , biracial narratives , books , criticism , humor , identity , judaism , lit theory , race , sex

Jun · 29

I write a lot about privilege. About how white guys get a whole lot of it, and guys in general, and white people in general. I also write about how, even though I am a female of color, I have been afforded a lot of white privilege. And I generally hope to encourage those with privilege to identify it and acknowledge it, because that’s the only thing that can lead to fewer disparities between genders and races. I don’t think I’ve ever said that acknowledging, or actively giving up, that privilege is easy. Or fun. Privilege is awesome. And there is a certain kind of privilege that I have, which I identified yesterday, that I have absolutely no interest or intention in giving up anytime soon.

It is this privilege that keeps me from rejoicing in Osama bin Laden’s death. I’m not sure if it’s that privilege that keeps me from having any feelings about his death whatsoever. That could just be my own way of processing, and my own way of remembering how completely baffled I was when I was 13 years old and it was September 11, 2001. That year was incredibly confusing, and I couldn’t figure out who had caused the attacks, since everyone kept talking about this bin Laden guy, but then we decided to take down this Hussein guy instead.

I have middle class American privilege, and it’s probably also the same privilege for much of the upper class and even the lower class, as long as it lives in America. There are three facets to that privilege: murder, military, and political awareness. That privilege means I grew up in a world where murder has never, ever been necessary. This is a truth on a personal, tangible level, because I did not grow up around violence, but also, in my eyes, political, because the United States is blessed with an imperfect but rather efficient justice system that may include but does not require the death penalty, and because the United States is blessed with having, until recently, been a first-world nation, so in my understanding, we should have quite a few strengths at our disposal, enabling us to reach conclusions, agreements, or justice in ways that don’t require the death of humans, whether civilian, political, or military. Speaking of that, my microcosm also, until very recently, did not include any members of the military, so I did not live in a world in which people had to (by making a choice to be in a career that required the to) kill other people, or put themselves in harm’s way, and I did not live in a world where I knew people who died in the line of action, or who had missing spouses, children, or parents because they were away doing stuff I still don’t pretend to understand. Finally, that privilege extended to my political awareness, because I did not grow up in a society that required me to know what was going on in any sort of life-or-death way. I did not grow up having to understand why it was that I had to avoid the landmines next to my home. I was not an American preteen living during one of the World Wars, being encouraged to buy war bonds or plant victory gardens, or being told that rations just did not allow for a real Halloween with real candy. I was never a Cuban teenager being required by Castro to be brainwashed and then charged with the task of brainwashing others. I am very lucky not to have to deal with excessive politics just to get my day done. My awareness of political figures when I was young went from the mayor straight to President Clinton, who was mostly just that guy who played the saxophone and then did something with some girl named Monica that made everyone mad at him. So the September 11th attacks came as a huge shock, but also kind of as a huge nothing, to me. And so, because of this great privilege I have (and it’s the murder-is-never-necessary part that I don’t want to give up; the other parts I already have, for the most part), that I do not feel it is appropriate to rejoice in the death of someone.

I can understand the feelings of relief some people might have, and I can see the political implications for Obama’s reelection, and I can’t say that I’m politically sad he’s gone, but frankly, I can’t say Osama bin Laden has been up to much except hiding for the past nine years (again, that could just be my privilege of ignorance talking), and regardless of the major tragedy he caused, in my worldview, killing him should not have been on the table.

And while I accept that there are limits to my compassion here, because of that privilege, and I am not unwilling to let others have their feelings about bin Laden, I am offended by the crass statements I have seen on Facebook for the past twelve hours or so. Some just seem silly, like “I will sleep easier tonight,” because, again, if you live in the United States, I sincerely doubt that you have spent every night in the last nine years with insomnia. Especially if you’ve grown up with any of the privileges I just outlined. Statuses like “ding dong, the dick is dead” just make people look like ignorant assholes. And that Obama meme that says, “Sorry it took so long for me to show you my long-form birth certificate–I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden” bothers me for so many reasons, like how I am a pacifist, and like how Obama himself did not kill bin Laden, and like how it presumes Obama’s political agenda when this is just another enemy he inherited, and like how it panders to those assholes who constantly try to discredit Obama, and for a million other reasons. I also hate seeing all those facebook statuses because I just don’t understand how that kind of mind works. Growing up Jewish, with social activist parents and grandparents, and growing up a Democrat, and growing up an intellectual, I am struck that people who respond to death in that way (again, this is colored by my privilege) are supremely ignorant and irrational. Nobody told me to be a pacifist when I was growing up, but the fact that I was raised to question and to research, the fact that I was required to perform volunteer work year round, and the fact that my parents talked to me about all manner of things and encouraged me to read about all manner of things, made me so. I’m not trying to de-legitimize the death of someone’s sibling who fought in Afghanistan, or anything like that, but to boil everything down to “It is because Osama bin Laden existed that my brother, Soldier X, is dead” shows, to me, an incredible lack of critical thinking and human compassion. Sure, that is exactly what it boils down to, but there’s a reason we don’t boil things down. If you boil your water for too long and it all boils off, your pasta burns and you’re left with nothing. If you boil events like this down to that level, you are missing an awful lot of complexities, responsibility on the part of many nations and groups, and cause and effect (i.e. how did bin Laden come to have the ideas he did? What is it about the culture and politics of the US that attract hate? What crimes have we ever committed in the name of religion? What are the social and cultural impetuses for hate crimes and terrorism?) I know I can’t see the whole picture, but I wish people would acknowledge that few of us can see the whole picture, rather than make broad generalizations and offensive statements because they don’t want to. Feel closure, sure. Be hopeful for peace ahead. But feel closure because of the possibility of less violence, not because a human is no longer living. We should never be happy that bad people are dead. We should be sorry for the circumstances that made them angry, violent people, and we should be sad about the damage they caused. But just as Obama reminded us that the best way to honor the memory of people like Christina Taylor Green is to try and make the world a better place, I don’t believe we should be happy that we’ve made a statement about killing people by killing someone else.

But I guess I’m just lucky to be able to say that.

Slightly edited in an attempt to be more clear.

Posted in politics

Tagged "philosophy" , criticism , identity , judaism , politics , privilege , sad

May · 02

This post is inspired by this post at Racialicious. The comment I posted there appears at the bottom of this page.

I don’t know about you, but I had the best Christmas this year.

I grew up vaguely celebrating the holiday, since my father is Catholic but he and my mother raised me and my sister Jewish. Like, we didn’t really give gifts to each other on Hanukkah but rather waited until the 25th (we did that up until this year, actually, when my parents were out of town and my sister was with her husband’s family), we would sometimes remember to buy a tree (and they smell amazing, so I’m always down for a Christmas tree), and I’ve been to Mass a handful of times in my life. But this December 25th was particularly awesome because I was alone in my house, I slept late, I took a bubble bath, I watched a movie, I did a puzzle, I read a book, and in general I did all the lovely, lazy things I always want to do when I have the day off from work, but this time I didn’t really have any chores to do or errands to run, so I got to do them all, instead of just some.

I don’t really understand Christmas anyway. I know it’s the reappropriation of Jesus’ birthday to a more convenient time coinciding with the winter solstice, but I don’t really understand how a jolly old man who fits into chimneys got added into the mix. And of all the people I know who celebrate Christmas, both the religious ones and the non-religious ones, the holiday is mostly about tone-deaf people singing aesthetically unpleasing music, cookies, and presents. That’s all fine, because that’s just how it goes in America, and other holidays have gone that way, too. And in a way, I think the fact that Christmas is forced on everyone makes it even less religious and more just a national pastime, like watching the Superbowl or giving each other Valentines. But if you happen to actively practice a religion that doesn’t care so much about Jesus, people stop seeing Christmas as that American consumerist holiday and try to tell you how religiously significant it still is, and how you must have your own Christmas, like Hanukkah! Because they come at the same time of year, so Hanukkah is totally the Jewish Christmas, right?

Except it’s not, because Hanukkah isn’t even canon; it’s just extra. And fun as it is to have a holiday that basically requires you to eat fried food, it’s not all that important aside from that. If you want to say that Christmas has a huge religious significance, the “equivalent” has to be Passover for the Jews. I hate it when people think that everyone has to have a Christmas, first because it makes Christmas the norm and other holidays the other, and because it mistakenly assumes that Christmas has a religious significance that for most people it has lost, and because it assumes that all religions are the same. And in a way they are, but I think they’re the same in that their mythologies all have some essential truths or storylines that are similar, not because they all celebrate a virgin birth by going to the mall every day in December.

This is all a diatribe of how little I care for or about Christmas, because I don’t feel like it’s a holiday that has any tie to my personality, my religion, or my budget. I’m also realizing that I just don’t care about most holidays, period. I abhor finding something to do on New Year’s Eve, because personally, I find it rather stupid. At midnight the calendar is going to change. Well, newsflash, but that happens every midnight. Yesterday was a different day, too. Also I hate any holiday that purports to be about inherent, incumbent personal change or that requires you to have a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/whatever or that has all these social rules tied to it about what you can wear and how much you have to drink, etc. Usually I watch movies on New Year’s Eve and fall asleep before midnight. But I feel obligated to do something because we’re all socialized that it is the correct thing to do. And that is, I think, the problem with Christmas as well. I mean, I participate in Secret Santas and all, too, because it’s easier to do so than to explain why I’m not going to, and because it’s always nice to get a present. And if you really feel as if Christmas is personally significant, whether it’s because of religion, the fun family dinner, getting presents, or because you somehow enjoy how crowded the mall is after Thanksgiving, then you should celebrate it. But I think Christmas and other holidays, at least in the United States, are more about socialization than anything else. We are obligated to participate, whether or not it goes with our religious, personal, financial, or social identities, because that’s the way society is set up. Our lives revolve around moving from one holiday to another. It would just be nice if we tried a little harder to see that not all holidays are created equal, and not all people care about all holidays equally.

And here is the comment I left at Racialicious :

I work at a children’s museum, and from November to February, we have various “festivals of friendship,” where we center an afternoon around a holiday or cultural celebration and have various folk art crafts, musical/dance performances, story readings, etc. We started with a luau, then we had Hanukkah, then Christmas, and next on the list are MLK Day, Chinese New Year, and Carnaval. I think it’s a nice start, even if it is missing things like Diwali and Eid, and even if Hanukkah is a fairly unimportant holiday religiously (Passover is far more important, I would say, and even in terms of kids’ celebrations, Purim would be far more entertaining). But I do have people wondering if, because I’m black, I’m going to be celebrating Kwanzaa (our daily craft on Sunday was an mkeka mat), which confuses them, because I’m also Jewish and “celebrate” Hanukkah, and I’ve never met a single person who celebrates Kwanzaa. Not to mention, things like decorating in “Christmas colors” and “Hanukkah colors” (I don’t consider Hanukkah to really have colors, since the ones we use just seem to be based on the fact that those are the colors of the Israeli flag) or baking Kwanzaa cakes are all ways of making other holidays seem like Christmas. It’s especially funny given that most people, when only talking about Christmas, bemoan its lack of religious basis nowadays, since it’s mostly about consumerism, and it’s not as if Jesus brings you presents to celebrate your birthday, so it’s already become muddled with other mythologies and traditions and holidays.

My favorite thing about the holidays, which was also my least favorite thing, was the other day at work when we made candy cane reindeer, and four Orthodox Jewish boys wanted to participate. For one positive thing, theirs were the most creative and interesting reindeer, probably because for them, it was just a craft, not something that had to end up resembling Rudolph to be correctly made, and for the negative thing, they weren’t sure if they could eat the candycanes, because the box didn’t say anything about whether it was kosher. I had to go and google the box and call Target, and ended up getting no information and assuming they were not kosher, because they were cheap, and cheap candy companies can’t usually afford to be kosher. I would say those boys are an example of what inclusiveness should be about–participating in a “seasonal,” holiday-specific activity just to have fun and learn a little, but also an example of how inclusiveness fails when the dominant culture won’t make concessions. I wish someone would be as willing to dress up for Purim or celebrate Diwali as these boys were to make Rudolphs that they couldn’t even eat.

Posted in religion

Tagged "philosophy" , criticism , culture , holidays , identity , judaism , life , wishful thinking

Dec · 29

I’m reading Paradise Lost in my British literature class, and although it’s one of those things you kind of know already before you read it, it’s also making all of western civilization and western literature make a lot more sense. And it’s one of those things you read and realize that, if only it were one of the first things you had ever read, your life as it relates to books might have had more meaning up to now. Yesterday I had to read excerpts from books 2, 3, and 4, and 2 and 3 were making me think of the most random things. I’m sure Paradise Lost could make people think about a lot of things, like other epic poems, the Bible, His Dark Materials , etc etc. But since I am me and I think of the most random things, book 2 made me think of the trilogy Prophecy of the Sisters , which I still can’t decide if I really like or not, and book 3 made me think about tzedakah, because the pre-Jesus figure presented in Milton’s epic is so not Jewish.

Being Jewish myself, I only know so much about the New Testament. What I know comes from popular culture and the vague memories I have of my high school comparative religion class–I really wish that I had paid more attention in it, because I know we learned a lot of great stuff about major world religions. So anyway, I did check out the Spark Notes summary (though Milton’s arguments are basically his own Spark Notes) of book 3, just because I tend to miss Christian religious references in literature because they don’t naturally stand out to me. So once I started reading, I knew that G-d and the Son were going to be talking about Satan’s plans to corrupt Adam and Eve, yadda yadda. I do think that Milton does really cool stuff with his source material, rearranging the events of the Bible and all, and I think it’s funny that G-d and the Son plan everything out, from his crucifixion to communion rites, but all while the Son is saying that he is going to sacrifice himself, he keeps reminding G-d that he’s going to come back to Heaven and regain his throne and be rewarded for being selfless.

So I stopped there and thought that, if this is Milton’s idea of what Jesus was like when he was pre-Jesus, he is most definitely not Jewish. Or at least not a good Jew.

In Hebrew, there is no word for “charity.” I like that, because I’m not a big fan of the Christian idea of charity, especially when viewed against Jewish tzedakah or Muslim sadaqah , which is more based on tikkun olam than on making yourself feel good by helping someone who, in your eyes, so obviously needs your assistance. Again, I’ve only been to church about 10 times in my life (mostly Catholic ones), and a lot of my ideas of Christian charity come from that insipid family on “Seventh Heaven,” but as far as I can understand, traditional Christian charity seems to come from an idea of helping those less fortunate, rather than doing what’s right. (When I’m not being religious, I think that everything we do is driven most by a sense of feeling good about what we’re doing, and I also think that above all, doing good things is good, no matter your reason. But still. We can always strive to an ideal, and I think the Jewish and Muslim ideals beat the Christian one here.) One thing I remember my mother teaching me when I was young was that the best kind of giving is anonymous, because then it’s really tzedakah, which means “justice.” You should give because it’s what you’re supposed to do, not because there is going to be a plaque somewhere with your name on it or because people are going to send you letters of thanks. I may be falsifying a connection here, but I think tzedakah goes nicely with the Jewish custom of not naming babies (or colleges, like how Brandeis was going to be named after Einstein until he said, “What, you want me dead already?”) after living people. It’s bad luck, and it’s bad form. Your name doesn’t matter. The world is what matters.

It’s very easy to talk about tzedakah and a lot harder to practice it. Given that we are human, we like recognition. I certainly do. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at it. I don’t know if it’s because I’m actually better at tzedakah, or if I’m just more uncomfortable being the center of attention. But it’s something you constantly have to work at.

So, going back to Milton, his pre-Jesus is, yes, doing what is arguably a very noble thing by sacrificing himself, and it’s something that the rest of Heaven doesn’t volunteer to do. But he does so with the understanding that he will end up back in Heaven, and back at the right hand of G-d, so he’s getting a reward. And, given that in this poem, at least, G-d and the Son know basically everything that is about to happen, he must know that the whole world is going to know his name for millennia. So it’s not an act of tzedakah but an act of charity. I know it doesn’t matter to anyone except me that Milton’s pre-Jesus isn’t Jewish, since Milton wasn’t Jewish, and he probably didn’t think very highly of Judaism, but I do think it’s rather interesting.

Oh, the places your mind can wander.

Tagged "philosophy" , books , criticism , judaism , poetry , social justice

Nov · 30

I had coffee with another biracial Jew last week. The difference is that he is not adopted and so grew up knowing his black family, and also he is a he and not a she, and also he is vaguely Orthodox and at least Conservative, whereas I am a lax Reform Jew. Still, it was fun to compare our experiences of being in college and finding out who we are, even though he has 2 1/2 years on me. Though he’s older, I will graduate from college first, because he attended a yeshiva for two years, which is something else that is very cool.

I’ve found that college has made me much more tolerant to other religions. (I had a big paragraph about why I think I have a lot in common with Mormons in terms of intellectual beliefs, but that’s kind of irrelevant for this post, so I deleted it.) It has also made me understand that when I used to say that I was black, I didn’t really have any emotional attachment to saying that. It was just a racial fact, which I think is fine, because I had no ethnic or cultural ties to being black, and I wasn’t really part of any black community. I still don’t feel that I have a lot of ethnic attachment to being black, but college has given me more of an understanding of how the fact that I am racially black (well, half) does have some bearing on how the world sees me, and in that respect, I am becoming more mindful of the fact that being black is a piece of my identity.

The aforementioned guy said that it’s common that black and mixed women find their racial identity in college after being exposed more to a black community. I don’t know where he got that fact, but it seems valid enough. Still, I’ve found that most of the black friendships I have made and kept have been with other people who feel more racially black than culturally black, if that makes any sense. I feel like I am more a part of a black outsider community than a black community. But is there one cohesive black community? That seems like a vast generalization, but not feeling a part of any black community, it seems like there must be some big community that is just out of reach. The guy mentioned that he felt it was hard to find that he belonged in the black community on campus is because it’s not a very intellectual one, which was a sad and almost racist thing to say, but also true. Then again, our campus is just not a very intellectual one, because it is a state school with low admission standards and low prices, so it attracts a lot of out of state kids of all colors who are just going to college because their parents are making them, not because they want to learn.

The identity that I’ve felt most comfortable with throughout my life, but also the one that I’ve felt most challenged with throughout my life, is my Jewish identity, and maybe some of the confusion lies in the fact that it is a religious identity and an ethnic identity, so it’s double the work. The religious part is the one I feel most challenged by, because I am now far more Jewishly religious than anyone else in my immediate or extended family, which makes me a bit of a weirdo (especially since my mother and sister have already married me off to this Orthodox boy and bemoaned it, when in fact he and I are not, at this point, even dating, and I don’t know what it says about their opinion of me that they’ve decided I will convert to Orthodox Judaism). And yet I am not even remotely religious compared to any of my close friends who are Jewish. And the point that I participate in religious activities is defined by my cultural and intellectual upbringing.

Then there is the fact that in terms of the food I eat, the jokes I tell, the slang I use, the foreign languages I speak, the university I attend, and a ton of other daily life kinds of things, I am Latina, and that’s because my sister is Latina, my dad is Latino, and I live in a city where being Latin is pretty much the norm. People who meet me first by my name will assume that my racial identity is Latina, but people who meet me first by my appearance will likely be a little confused. Until I reference Brazilian things, which then settles their confusion. But my identifying as Brazilian is a bit of a lie, and sometimes I feel guilty about that, because it is an identity I’ve given myself, even though it also kind of comes from my upbringing (my dad grew up in Brazil, we have Brazilian friends, and Brazil remains the only country–until Israel, at least–where I did not have to explain myself).

I hate having to parse this out. It makes for interesting conversations with other people who are mixed and don’t fit into one neat box, but it’s also incredibly tiresome. I am just me, but I am also my ethnicity (ies). I am beginning to understand that racial identity is probably the weakest identity of them all, but also the most important, because it is what other people see first, and because people assume that race and ethnicity are the same thing, they think that when they see you, they have your culture figured out. The only time I find that my race–just my race–is the main defining factor of myself is when I’m looking for help doing my hair, doing my makeup, or finding clothes to wear–namely, when I’m reading lifestyle magazines. Since I’ve started reading blogs and literature on sociology and race and culture, I’ve found that the easiest term, and the one that most closely aligns me with other intellectually minded, culturally minded, not the status quo people is the term “person of color.” I think it’s becoming my favorite.

I think I started this post out with the objective of defining something, but I definitely just muddled things further.

Posted in rambling

Tagged "philosophy" , culture , identity , judaism , other people , race

Aug · 16

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