Your Blues Ain't Like Mine

I have read more books this year that have really, really made me think. More than in who knows how long--maybe ever. I've double posted a few times lately on both my blogs,and I'm going to have to do it again tonight.

Over the weekend, I finished the latest--Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, by Bebe Moore Campbell. I happened to see this while browsing at the library a few weeks ago, and remembered a reference to the author in a blurb on Carleen's book, Orange Mint & Honey, of course! And I did not know until just this minute when I went searching for a book link that Campbell is deceased, having died of a brain tumor in 2006.

If you've known me very well in "real life" for long, you know racism (i.e., trying to eliminate it) is one of my soapboxes. And yet, my eyes were opened even a bit wider reading this book. I felt such a mixture of anger, shame, and hope while reading. I think the premise behind the book is that we all have our burdens to bear, and that it's far too easy to judge others, believing that our own burden is just a little bit heavier because of what or who we are. You might come away with something altogether different if you read it. And, of course, there are so many big ideas in the book, and that's just one.

But, I want to talk about those emotions a little more here.

Anger. If you can read this story without feeling anger, I am afraid for you. The fictional events are based on a true story, where a young African American man in the deep South, right at the beginning of the civil rights era, was lynched for allegedly speaking inappropriately to a white woman. Lip service was paid to justice, almost making it worse than if it had never been brought up at all. The rest of the story entails the unfolding of the lives of those surrounding the event over the next 30 years--African American, white, and mixed-race characters.

Shame. I had to ask my mom over dinner Saturday evening what happened in our own family to stall racism. I loved my maternal grandma--she was truly one of my favorite people when I was growing up--yet I cringed and felt physically ill every time I heard her or one of her generation in my family use that horrible word you can guess at here.

For some reason, though, my mother wasn't like that. Over dinner, she told me that when she was growing up in New Mexico, they were beginning to talk in the public schools about civil rights and putting a stop to racism, and she guesses she just took it to heart. This suprises me--it was in the 40s and 50s, and that seems pretty progressive to me! She remembers a time when her father was furious with her for accepting a ride home from camp from the family of an African American girl, and another when she went on a date with a Hispanic boy.

Unfortunately, others in my extended family of her same generation weren't influenced like she was, and I am sorry to say some are no different all the way down to my generation. You could say we are not close today. :-D

On the other hand, my father's family was a strange contrast. I was under the impression my paternal grandmother was racist, too, although I did not know her well, but it turns out she was selective--she was prejudiced against Hispanics, but not African Americans.

This could be because, as it turns out, she fell deeply in love with an African American boy when she was in her late teens, and her father forced an end to that relationship, sometime in the 1920s, I guess. Grandma was an unhappy person as long as I knew her, and that went a long way in explaining her personality to me. She also bore the stigma of being one quarter Cherokee. At least, we think it was Cherokee. The family never talked much about it back in those days. It was a stigma, after all, and the guy responsible for that quarter was never publicly in the picture. I think there is a great story idea in there somewhere, and in fact, did a character sketch for a writing class last year based on the few details I knew.

Anyway, all I knew was the story I heard for years--when my father called to tell her he was engaged to a girl at the university he attended in New Mexico, Grandma's first question was, "Is she a Mexican?" And yet, she also sponsored a Jewish family in the displacement camps after WWII to come to the United States--including their grandbaby who had been fathered by a Nazi soldier who was in love with the daughter.

So, shame because I hate the way people related to me acted sometimes, and how some probably act to this day. But also hope.

Hope because I saw how my parents were able to stop this cycle in one family, in one generation, simply by saying to themselves and to us, their children, "This is never, ever acceptable." My dad worked with international students at the University of Colorado when I was a kid, and we had visitors of every race and religion in our house from the earliest time I can remember. It was just the norm.

My brother's best friend called my mom "Mom," too, and frequently asked my mom to give him and his bike a ride home from our house when it got too dark. He said, "White people don't like to see me riding my bike in your neighborhood after dark, sometimes they shoot at my bike license with BB guns." He was my brother's best man in his wedding. I spent the day I came home from the hospital with my middle baby with a broken heart. Alan had tried really hard to build a good life for himself, serving in the military, and trying to raise his son right, eventually as a single parent. Yet, somehow things went seriously awry. We learned that day I came home with my new baby that Alan, a victim of severe poverty and a childhood home in Five Points filled with crime, drugs, and despair, had cracked--he had murdered his own 10-year-old son, whom we had held as a baby, because the little guy had become involved in a gang. At least that was his reasoning.

The story was more horrible than we ever could have imagined, and yet, he wasn't just another statistic to us, he was our big brother, our son, our best friend. And I don't mean that in the sense of those who say, "I love black people. Some of my best friends are black." I admire your intention, but really, are they your best friends? On the other hand, I am not tooting my own horn here. I am sometimes reminded of the instances where I am myself racist, in some form or another. You know how I know? That still, small voice in my heart that whispers to me.

It occurred to me as I wrote that paragraph that one of the overriding themes in the manuscript I'm currently revising comes directly from my experiences. Several of my characters have a big "difference"--they are deaf. In my story, my main protagonist is deaf, but some of the other deaf characters do bad things. It is impossible to identify the "good guys" or "bad guys" simply based on their physical characteristics. In one scene, my character's granddad reminds him that in the world, there are really only two types of people--those who really care and those who really don't. I know that's pretty broad, but it's also pretty true if you think about it.

Anyway, I encourage you to locate this book. I think this would be an excellent book for a mandatory high school reading list. It's quite graphic, but probably no more graphic than they see every day on television and in movies, if more disturbing.

Sorry for going on so long, but this was on my heart. And how appropriate, the following quote just showed up on an email digest I get.

"People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun's out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light within."

—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross