Jamie
Jamie and I met in a book club, the Current Events Reading Group that is hosted monthly at @skylightbooks. For a long time we were the only regular attendees with any distinguishable African American heritage. This is no little burden. To be in a predominantly white liberal intellectual space where the texts we discuss are by design meant to explore some aspect of marginalized or otherwise underrepresented people is challenging. For nearly two years before Jamie started attending, I shouldered this small burden alone. I was deeply relieved when Jamie showed up, and continued to show up month after month. But our attempts at finding a connection were not initially successful. In fact, it was quite tense. I remember feeling conflicted, wanting to establish a bond with the other mixed person in our group, but here is the thing: most mixed people are often the ONLY mixed person in any given group. Suddenly, we found ourselves living that Spiderman meme. Mixed people are by and large quite adept at acclimating to a variety of circumstances and situations. We are highly adaptable. I can only speak for myself when I say that when I first began to reach out to Jamie my hopes for a connection far outweighed any realistic or reasonable expectation. We struggled for a long time, silently, passive aggressively, before being able to sit down and have coffee and get to know one another. But I’ll never forget that initial tension and the way in which it made feel, like we were somehow occupying the other’s natural space. I do believe that this is a uniquely PartBlack experience. I think that because no other mix is perceived as being a bridge, a key, an answer to historic injustices that we experience the world differently. It’s a lot, and when faced with other mixed people we have an understanding of one another that cannot escape the underlying feeling that most mixed people have: I am a fraud, a poser, a phony, and this other person who is like me is going to see the truth in a way others unlike us cannot.
Q: Do you identify as Black? White? Mixed? Something else? Please describe your ethnic/cultural background.
A: I’ve been trying to answer this question for nearly a month and if I am honest my entire life. All I keep hearing in my mind are spiraling questions that return backwards on themselves - who is this blackness for? Who made it, who owns it, who wins it? Why part Black? Why not part White? What happens to the whiteness in me when I chose the blackness? Does it go into hiding, into darkness, into it’s own blackness? When I grew up in Japan, I was gaijiin ... just “outsider.” My blackness and my whiteness were the same - outsider, outside of Japanese. I sort of had a place then - outside. Here in America, I get caught up chasing horizon lines, feeling the pain, the exclusion, the confusion, the pleasure, the joy of being part black which is most often thrust upon me from the outside without my consent. I can see it but can’t get to it, can’t touch it, can’t it wipe away or erase it so I can integrate the parts of me that being part black asks me to reject. I’m learning to live in the tension there, in not really knowing how to identify. It’s liberating and fluid for me. It feels like this is what it is to be human, to feel the tension of the interconnectivity of all of yourself and illusion of separate parts. Maybe this is what others can learn - to be ok in the tension of not knowing, of not needing to box others in or out, to be compassionate and curious and not judgmental.
Q: What do you think the world could learn from PartBlack people?
A: It’s magical to me to realize that every human life that has ever existed entered the earth at a place, date and time that is unique. Not even identical twins share this in common. For me, this is like a riddle. When we look at what makes us different for too long, perhaps we begin to forget that what separates us is also what we share. Our shared experience is our difference and unique perspective in the world. What makes us the same is that we’re not the same, not a single one of us. Woah, let that expand for a moment ... It’s so calm in my body just to sit with that. I wonder if I would be able to get to that so easily if I could easily fall in line with one race? I can’t know in this body. Maybe someone else out there can share how their body feels.
Q: Rather than answer any more questions, Jamie thought it would be fun to share some of the books she read last year with you all. Please enjoy and let her know what you think in the comments!
The Course of Love. De Botton
A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind. Matsumoto
The Untethered Soul. Singer
The Mushroom at the End of the World. Tsing
Mindfulness for Beginners. Kabat-Zinn
The Miracle of Mindfulness. Hanh
How to Take Your Time. De Botton
A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way. Tzu translated by Ursula K Le Guin
Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Davis
Darkness Visble. Styron
Status Anxiety. De Botton.
What I Know for Sure. Winfrey
A New Earth. Tolle
The Little Book of Design Research Ethics. IDEO
Inward. Yung Pueblo
Dare to Lead. Brown
The Burnout Society. Han
The Songlines. Chatwin
The Power of Now. Tolle
Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design. Holmes
Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer
Ruined By Design. Monteiro
Ikigai. Garcia and Miralles
How Emotions Are Made. Barrett
The Doorway Into Now. Tolle
Data Love. Simanowski
The Courage to Be Disliked. Kishimi + Koga
The Secret. Bryne
A Return to Love. Williamson
How to Love. Hanh
Becoming Supernatural. Dispenza
Whole Again. MacKenzie
The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. Chopra
Disoriental. Djavadi
Revolting Prostitutes. Mac + Smith
One Straw Revolution. Fukuoka
Sowing Seeds in the Desert. Fukuoka
Too Loud A Solitude. Hrabal
Lament of the Dead. Hillman + Shamdasani
The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. Chopra
Hunger. Gay
Supper Club. Williams
Heavy. Laymon
An American Sunrise. Harjo
The Bluest Eye. Morrison
Crazy Brave. Harjo
The Path Made Clear. Winfrey
7 Spiritual Laws of Success. Chopra
Talking to Strangers. Gladwell
A New Earth. Tolle
Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankel
Spiritual Partnership. Zukav
Beekeeping for Beginners. Bradshaw
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. Dispenza