MINNESOTA BOOK AWARDS THE LOFT LITERARY CENTER MARCH 20, 2015 HOSMER LIBRARY MARCH 23, 2015 (36th and 4th Avenue by Richard Green School, previously Central High School) (Aunt Lucille Wilson Shivers lived on 39th and 4th Avenue. Her husband, Spencer Shiver, owned the barber shop on the corner of 38th …
Hi everyone, quick note. I just finished rereading LOVE IMAGINED in its entirety since publication, August 2014 (in preparation for a radio cast next week). I didn’t cry! Writing, like love, can be painful, but also transcendent. Write, keep on writing-read, but most of all live!
Minnesota. Sunny but brrrrrrrr cold . Blessed to be inside, but eating too much comfort food and watching too much daytime tv! However, a spurt of energy has given me the ability to cross off one more item from my “to due” list / purging page after page of hard …
Someone asked me early on why I wrote mostly about my Black identity. I realized it was because that was the identity I was denied. My father is Chinese, an immigrant, arriving in the U.S. when he was eleven. My mother is Negro, according to my birth certificate. However, my mother was “passing” ; for her that meant not telling anyone she was Black, although, come to think of it, I’m not sure she told anyone she was white either. I was brought up to deny who I was. Except, if push came to shove I could say I was Chinese. Funny, how many people ask me if my mother is mixed, black and white. Well, yes, there was that Irish Plantation owner’s son that impregnated my great grandmother; however, there is a history in America that if you have one drop of black blood, you are black, period.
