Tawanda
I was introduced to Tawanda through another PartBlack Project guest, Mannie. Tawanda and I exchanged a few emails, and made plans to shoot somewhere in her neighborhood of South Los Angeles. We took advantage of the USC Rose Garden being only a few blocks away, and did our best not to melt in the midday summer sun. As we drifted through the maze-like rose garden, I learned that Tawanda was new to Los Angeles and had moved to LA from New Mexico only recently. A multi-disciplinary artist with a natural curiosity about life and people, Tawanda embodies an easy grace and an easier charm, inspiring smiles from wide-eyed toddlers and fresh-fruit vendors alike. While leaning on a railing for one of our shots a passerby yelled out, “You’re beautiful,” and Tawanda blushed and said, “Thank you,” as if she had never heard someone say that before. She has the presence of someone who can achieve whatever they set their mind to.
Q: Do you identify as Black? White? Mixed? Something else? Please describe your ethnic/cultural background.
A: My mother is from Germany and my father is from Mozambique, so I have always identified as being mixed. My dad started driving semi trucks when we were young and would only be home 3 or 4 times a year, so my mother raised us. There’s no other way to describe mine and my sister’s upbringing than as a Euro-hippie dream—our mom raised us to be emotional, nurturing, relaxed, spiritual and hardworking in a place dominated by white/hispanic demographics. My dad’s tiny dabbles of parenting was garnished in grand gifts and gestures, passion, dreams and discipline. They both brought with them a mindset of frugality, of “finishing all the food of the plate,” but also enjoying the luxury of good company, home-cooking, focus on family and world music playing constantly. I wasn’t raised in a black family or neighborhood, but I was always one of 10 to 20 black kids in school, so it was there that I discovered what society thought it was to be black. I find that, depending on the context, when speaking on things that directly involve black people, I identify with blackness because of my life in the body of a non-white person. Obviously, I am just as much white as I am black, but because we are such an appearance-based society, and I am not white-passing, I’ve always been seen as more black than white, but never black enough to be black and never white enough to be white, which is a WHOLE other ongoing internal conversation I have yet to get to the bottom of…
Q: What countries have you traveled to, and how does your physical appearance influence how people treat you around the world?
A: I’ve traveled to different places in Europe including Germany, France and The Netherlands, different places in Africa including Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, Thailand and Mexico and other places along the way, and the way I am treated based on my physical appearance depends on how common women like me are in that particular area, and also on the beauty standards and the degree of development of the country. For example, it’s fairly common to see someone of mixed race in Europe because of how many immigrants have resided there for many years. I feel like I blend in a little bit more. However, the last times I visited Africa, or Thailand, I sometimes felt like a spectacle, like I do here at home in the U.S. sometimes too. People want to touch the hair. Comment on the beautiful skin tone. Great smile. Big brown eyes. The height. The poise and the grace. Every country has been pushed and encouraged early by colonizing forces to adopt and normalize various aspects of Western life in addition to the beauty standards that include lighter/fairer skin, slim/small noses, symmetrical features, slenderness and hair in all the “right” places. In Western cultures, mixed people are fetishized. So either way, regardless of where I am, I feel like I stand out, as a beautiful young woman who fully embodies and embraces her blackness, femininity and sensuality. Most often, I am treated with respect. Sometimes I am greeted almost coldly, in a way where it feels the other person assumes my life is easier because of the way I look. Other times, my life is indeed made easier because of the way I look. Sometimes I’m not looked at at all. In other situations, people assume I deeply desire sexual attention outside of myself, and my boundaries are overlooked and overstepped. Sometimes, a quick and sweet compliment is made, spoken or made with the eyes. Sometimes I am gawked at, and I feel naked even with clothes on. I had to teach myself not to look at anyone if I didn’t want to notice the attention, or the absence of it. Somewhere in there I found the freedom to simply exist.
Q: Are there other PartBlack people in your life, and/or how do you feel when you meet another person who is PartBlack?
A: I thank the cosmos my sister was born after me, because I never lacked the company of a being just as rare as I felt I was, growing up in a small town. It was only when I found other PartBlack kids and moved to LA a couple months ago that I discovered just how much space we have taken up in many different communities. We are limitless in that respect. We are everywhere. When I see someone else who looks like me, there’s an unspoken bond. We just pause and smile at our reflections, lending that magic even more space. “I see you. You’re not alone.” Bigger cities often have more spaces where you can be unapologetically black in whatever ways you see fit. I’m honored that I get to fully explore that now, and that for the first time, I’m meeting people who understand me.
Q: Which part of your background do you identify with and/or who are you closest to in your family?
A: Out of my parents, I am naturally closest to my mother and as a direct result, closer all things Divinely Feminine, because she raised us. A household made of women who love eachother is one of the most powerful things I’ll ever know. I identify strongly with that aspect of my background, the love from the mothers and sisters, and the feminine characteristics of nurturing, reflecting, being emotional, creative and protective. My mom has had a huge impact on my life. Let me try to paint you a picture. Born and raised in Germany, living in New Mexico for the past 24 years and falling in love with the desert, she’s a magical spirit in a small, stout, strong body. She always pushed us to follow our dreams and always gave us the space to do what we needed to do. She discouraged us from eating overly processed foods, introducing us to the world of farmer’s markets, organics, fresh produce and whole wheat, even if it meant paying an extra dollar or two. It was quality over quantity, but she found ways to cultivate abundance. We would eat out maybe twice a month—every meal was home cooked and we’d all sit together, breakfast and dinner. Sacred, shared time. Shared, sacred space. She used to write love notes on our napkins when she made our lunches in elementary school. Sometimes she’d let us eat hot cheetos. We always kiss on the lips. I slept in my mom’s bed and we snuggled everyday until the end of high school. She is a child of WW2 survivors, and brought with her a mindset of frugality—anything that could possibly be recycled, was, even down to our bathwater, which goes to our plants. Fruit and vegetable scraps get fed to the desert. Old clothing can patch new clothing. She’s always been closest to Buddhism than to any other philosophy or religion. She loves the earth, Frida Kahlo and a good massage. We used to come together on some full moons, turn off all of the lights in the house and sit outside cross-legged chanting the Vajra Guru mantra. She meditates every morning and before and after she works, she takes my dog on a walk through the desert, and then when she feeds him, she always has a cigarette LOL. That is my mother. I didn’t see my mother’s way of living popularized in American culture until I got into college and suddenly everyone got hip to the idea of balance and living honestly. My parents are revolutionaries in that way.
Q: What are your thoughts on descriptors like light-skinned, high yellow, Mulatto, etc?
A: Most of these terms are outdated and if used are only to descibe a person’s complexion. I don’t have an issue with these descriptors until they are used in a way that denounces dark skin, by favoritizing, fetishizing or superiorizing lighter skin. I had to make up some words back there, but you get what I mean. **Anti-blackness is an offshoot of the umbrella that is racism. The more people believe that blackness is more palatable if it’s more aligned with Eurocentric, Westernized standards of beauty, the more they scream “ I have internalized racism!”
Q: What are your feelings on the N-Word? Do you use it?
A: The word never fit into my mouth quite right and I think it largely has to do with the fact that I’ve never been a part of a black community. I didn’t have homies to say it to in passing, my dad never said it unless he was joking around, never had a reason to describe someone using it, and only developed a footing in commonly-held black culture later in my life. Obviously, it’s a word that belongs to black people because it was one that was used against them until they repurposed it. I have absolutely no idea why members of the Latinx community or even the growing asian rap community would use it…. Ypeepo know betta. BUT OBVIOUSLY, WEEKLY I’m gripped by the passion of like, a Kendrick Lamar track and I have no choice but to scream n*gga into the universe or learning Nicki’s lessons on how to be a boss ass bitch in which she states “never let a clown n*gga try to play you,” which is definitely, the first rule. Watch your back, boss bitches in the making.
Q: In your career, how has being PartBlack helped or hurt you?
A: Helped because I look like Beyonce or Rihanna, and everyone loves an “exotic” happy girl on stage or in photos. Hurt because people sometimes can’t see me outside of being the next beyonce or rihanna, and forget that I’m Tawanda, who wants to make different music and not need to have a fat ass to survive. I dabble in so many different things and embody so many different aspects of myself that being taken seriously has become very important to me. Not that everything I do is serious. Just that I’d like to be appreciated for the entirety of my being, and not just the surface level assumption.
Q: Has ethnicity played a factor in your romantic relationships?
A: I’m having open relationships now (FINALLY, THANK GOD) but I found myself having the longest romantic “monogamous” relationships with white boys/men with dark brown hair, lusty eyes and atleast one facial mole… I have no idea what the fuck that is or where that came from, and I was let down each and every time, but again, I think it’s because I didn’t see many other options growing up in spaces dominated by a white/hispanic demographic. And then with the overculture SCREAMING @ me “your pRiNcE ChArMinG, and your GOD and your PRESIDENT, and your TEACHER, and your BOSS iS a WhiTe hEtEroSeXuaL mALe!!!” hasn’t helped at all with that either. I’ve always been incredibly attracted to a wide variety of different boys and men and more and more, women and genderfluid/queer folx. So I think the ways in which we’re ethnically surrounded growing up has a lot to do with the partners we have initially, but the older I get, the less it’s about “having a type” and “being with with one person” and suffocating eachother with romantic ideals of monogamous fairytale love and the more exploring I do. I love being in love, it really doesn’t matter who the person is or what they look like. If there’s an attraction there then…
Q: In general, are there benefits or challenges to being PartBlack?
A: There are benefits AND challenges to being anything at all.
Q: Have you ever felt that your life would be easier if you were just one ethnicity?
A: Absolutely but I would never want to be. It’d be easier because then I wouldn’t have to work so hard to discover all of these different aspects of myself feeling so removed from the places my ancestors are from. When you’re born in America, and your families are on the other sides of the earth, it’s almost as though you aren’t informed
Q: When was the first time someone referred to you as or directly called you a nigger?
A: I think I was maybe in the third or fourth grade, and I hardly knew the girl. It’s not a distinct memory. It’s more of a blur, and I remember a teacher taking us outside to talk about it. I remember years later, hearing about the life of this girl. Her parents were abusive and she and her sister had been in the system at some point. They’d lived in trailers, moved from state to state. Only now do I have the vocabulary and insight to understand how that kind of generational trauma and violence and anger had manifested, how that word had been regurgitated, and how seriously blessed I was, beyond that first incident. No one’s said it to my face since.
Q: Do you feel any obligation to any of the ethnicities or cultures in your background?
A: I used to feel a deep and anxiety-ridden sense of obligation to my family in Mozambique. I still feel it but in a different way..I’ve finally become convinced to put myself, in my universe, BEFORE the issues of the world so that I can create a platform big and strong enough to successfully address the issues of the world. Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in Africa. My father’s life has been like a movie, seperated from his family for 17 years during a civil war before moving to Germany where he met my mom. He was never able to get a college education and works so hard to provide for his families. He has trouble, having had to transplant himself into different countries and cultures, understanding me and my generation. Understandably—he was conditioned to survive. I was conditioned to ride the wave and trust the universe. It’s my dream to give back, and it’s my dream to delve deeper into Africa. Indigenous peoples’ know the earth better than anyone, and are facing the next waves of extinction as the Western world takes advantage of their resources and climate apartheid guarantees they bear the brunt of it. Something in me, especially with this rise in consiousness, knows I need to help save it, and sometimes it feels like time is running short. The world as we know it feels like it’s falling apart, but I still need to help save their stories, their music, their medicines, their wisdom, before its too late… my ancestors dreamt of me at some point in some way. I honor that.
Q: Do you consider yourself political, and in what ways?
A: HOW CAN YOU NOT BE POLITICAL IN TIMES LIKE THESE THOOOO, u kno? GET INVOLVED, you are needed. It sometimes feels like our society can’t see past labels, so in honor of that, I suppose I’d be a liberal intersectional feminist who should also seriously consider joining the Green Party because of how fucking ridiculous our bipartisan political structure is, and how big a mockery of democracy our government is. It’s all honestly a big mess that can be traced back first and foremost to toxic masculinity, but also capitalism/materialism and racism. I’m going to write a thesis on this at some point. All I know for sure is that our earth and its beings should be a bigger priority, that the 99%/ the PEOPLE should be listened to and in power, and that old, white men and their toxic patriarchal ideals need to sit down because it’s never served anyone in this country. It’s encouraged people to become sheep who are out of touch with their spirits and there emotions, who just become cogs in a great machine that goes nowhere. The future is POC, the future is divine and the future is female and feminine and the future is fluid. Periodt.
Q: What do you think the world could learn from PartBlack people?
A: To embrace all aspects of self. PartBlack people are bridges between two or more worlds and as such, we are adept at navigating all sorts of spaces and making the most of every experience because we KNOW, or atleast have an idea of all the sides. We know what it is to have to fight to be heard, because we never fit in a box. We live in such binary-based cultures, the idea that you’re either this OR that, one or the other. But the reality is that we are spectrums. We are many different things all at once and CONSTANTLY in flux from one moment to the next. PartBlack people are also the first generations of the human beings’ Beige Future, where everyone is the same color and race no longer exists… that’s just food for thought.
Q: What would you tell your 12-year-old self?
A: There is absolutely no reason to be so self-conscious. You’re a motherfucking star, LITERALLY, stardust. Stars do not dull themselves to exist in the universe. You’re never alone, you’re more beautiful than photoshop. You are heard, you are seen, you are loved, and all of your thoughts, your dreams and your words are valid. It’s normal to be sexual, it’s okay to explore. Never make yourself small, for any man. Don’t worry about your body. You should see where I am now. I’ve put myself in places I never thought I would, and it’s been the most incredible journey! I love you more than anything on earth. I’ll always hold you with softness and tenderness. Take your time. Enjoy every moment.