How I Knew that Diane and Leo Dillon Loved Me

Because these children's book illustrators crafted the most beautiful and touching images of people who look like me...

From Honey, I Love, by Eloise Greenfield
From Aida, by Leontyne Price
From Her Stories by Virginia Hamilton

Ten Reasons Why I Personally Loved The Cosby Show

1. Finally, a show about a black family that didn't lead to my white classmates asking me stupid questions (Them: "Is it hard living in the ghetto?" thisblackgirl: "My house is two doors down from yours!")
2. Cliff Huxtable was an OB/GYN with the same sort of medical practice that I wanted to have someday. In fact, I've heard that The Cosby Show inspired many young black men and women to go into medicine and law.
3. Claire Huxtable spoke flawless Spanish, just like mi abeula and all of the other black Hispanics that I never ever saw represented in the media.
4. The stories often had no plot, but I was laughing so hard, I didn't ever want them to end.
5. Bill Cosby somehow managed to make butt-ugly sweaters look cool. And he promoted black colleges just by wearing the school sweatshirts.
6. Theo Huxtable started NYU at the same time that I started there and...
7. ...while I was working at the NYU bookstore, I got an autograph from Malcolm Jamal Warner when he stopped by to purchase a school shirt. And Bill Cosby showed up at my undergraduate graduation.
8. Denise's boho style really inspired me to do my own thing fashionwise
9. My mother kinda resembled Phylicia Rashad, so every time I saw the show it reminded me of how beautiful my own mom is.
10. Everyone in America got to see what it was like to have a slightly befuddled but cool black dad who was funny, wise, practical and playful and who loved his kids with all his heart. Kinda like my Dad.

Mayor Dinkins and the Gorgeous Mosaic

When I first moved to New York in the late 80s, the city was a loud, brash, and fairly unsettling place. We had a loud, brash and fairly unsettling mayor named Ed Koch, who, in lieu of checking the Gallup Polls, would wander the streets of New York asking, "So how'm I doin'?" Because he was scary-tall and sounded like a teamster, little college freshmen girls like me would quickly respond, "Just fine!" and scurry away.

But around the time I started graduate school, something miraculous happened. The people of New York elected a new mayor named David Dinkins. David Dinkins was a black man, but that wasn't the miraculous part. The miracle was that the new mayor of New York was a gentleman. He was kind, compassionate, soft-spoken and gracious. He had a quiet majesty that enveloped him like a royal robe. And when David Dinkins, the first and only black mayor of New York City, was sworn in, I was so proud to be black and so proud to be a New Yorker.

The thing that I loved the most about David Dinkins' term as mayor of one of the most diverse cities on the planet was his description of racial/ethnic integration. He didn't describe New York as a melting pot or a salad like most people do. He called it a gorgeous mosaic. This had special meaning for me because one of the things that I loved the most about exploring the city was discovering the mosaic art everywhere.

This also had special meaning for me because I always saw my world not so much as a melting pot of different cultures, but as this dazzling kaleidoscope of blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, Caribbeans, etc., each with their own distinct and individual gifts to my personal universe.

David Dinkins gave me an expression to describe what I love the most about my life.

Viva the gorgeous mosaic.

Check out this discussion on NPR

NPR : Finding the Lighter Side of African-American Lit

Sometimes black people are funny. And yes, I mean funny "ha ha", not funny-looking (although Michael Jackson has clearly transcended the whole race thing now and is working his way into a whole other species... my guess is amphibian?).

But sometimes we're serious, sometimes we're soulful, sometimes we're angry, and sometimes we're just funny.

And that's okay.

Seriously.

Happy Birthday, Alice Walker!

About 15 years ago, Barnes and Noble had an in-store promotion that featured several large illustrations of the author Alice Walker. I grabbed one for myself and for years, it hung over my writing desk. When I joined a traveling circus after grad school, I hung the poster in my bunk for inspiration on days when I didn't feel like writing. Sometimes the crew guys would come by and notice the poster:

Crew Guy: Cool picture. That you?
thisblackgirl: No, that's Alice Walker.
Crew Guy: That your real name? (sometimes people in the circus have their real names and their "show" names. Mine was "that black girl with the computer.")
thisblackgirl: No that's her real name. She's a famous author and poet.
Crew Guy: She a writer?
thisblackgirl: Yep.
Crew Guy: You a writer.
thisblackgirl: Yep.
Crew Guy: Sure that ain't you?

Whenever someone online asks me which celebrity I most resemble, my answer is always "Alice Walker". It could be the glasses, the locks, the generally serene countenance or even the pen/book in hand, but I think it's more than that. I like to think that there some sort of ineffable quality that all black female literary writers possess. It's a certain grace, a certain style, a certain wisdom tapped from some ancient source of the Divine feminine.

I especially like to think that on days like today, when I feel neither graceful, stylish, nor wise. But whenever I read Alice Walker's work, hear her speak, or even just see her photo, a strangely comforting feeling comes over me and says, "It's okay. Deep inside of you is every story ever told from the beginning of time. Take your pen and let the words flow." Alice Walker is one of my all-time favorite muses.

I hope she gets extra flowers on her birthday cake today.

Kenneth Clark's Doll Study and My Toy Box

As a little girl, I loved dolls. One might say that I was obsessed with them. I had cuddly rag dolls, tiny dollhouse dolls, life-sized baby dolls and a flock of Barbies.

And not one of them was blond.


My parents didn't allow us to have white dolls. If someone gave us a standard Caucasian Barbie doll, it would mysteriously disappear to be replaced by a chocolate-skinned Christie doll. While I do remember once gazing longingly at a friend's Malibu Barbie and wishing that she was mine, for the most part, I was happy with my dolls. If I absolutely HAD to have a white doll, I would carefully paint its skin and eyes brown before it was "mine".

When I was finally old enough to buy my own dolls, my mother told me about a study on dolls and race. Back in the 40s and 50s, black psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark showed black and white dolls to school children and asked them which dolls were “pretty” and “nice,” and which ones were “bad”. While the white kids preferred the white dolls, so did 75% of the black kids. To most of the black children, the black dolls were just "bad". Really "bad". So "bad" that when Clark asked them which dolls looked more like themselves, some chose the white dolls, some couldn’t answer, and some just burst into tears.

After hearing about that study, I never thought about dolls the same way. I never did go on that Blond Barbie-buying spree. In fact, I started sewing black dolls of my own. And then an amazing thing happened.

In the mid-eighties, formerly sane Americans of all races completely lost their minds over a new toy on the market -- The Cabbage Patch Kid. Created by Georgian artist Xavier Roberts, each doll was "born" at a magical place named "Babyland General", stamped on the booty with Robert's signature and sent to the store with its very own name on its very own birth certificate. The fact that these dolls shot right off the "cute" scale into "borderline grotesque" was completely missed by all of us (but with all those huge hairstyles and shoulder pads blocking our collective view, it was easy for us to miss).

Everyone wanted to "adopt" one of these dolls, which came in different ethnicities. But the supplies were limited and Christmas was coming. So when shipments arrived and the stores opened, everyone scrambled to grab the boxes from the shelves before they were all gone. It was mayhem, madness. Suburban white parents starting fist fights in the doll aisle of the Toys R Us. I'd never seen anything like it.

But the best part came months later. Because supplies were so limited and people were desperate to take whatever doll they could, there were many white children who received a black doll for Christmas or Hanukkah. I can't tell you how many times I saw some little blond or redheaded girl cuddling a cocoa brown Cabbage Patch Kid like she'd just given birth to it herself. These children appeared to adore their black baby dolls just as much as I adored mine. I'd never seen anything like that either.

The Cabbage Patch Kid craze finally died down after a few years. Doll studies in 1987 revealed that more children of both races still chose white dolls over black dolls. So that whole "fad toy transcending race" thing really only lasted for a moment.

But for this black girl, it was an amazing moment.

Coretta Scott King's passing...

...really hurt my heart until I saw this photo:



And this one:




Now I'm so happy that she's being reunited with her beloved Martin at last.