shabbat shalom

I spent this past week in Clayton, Georgia, doing training for my Hillel internship this year, and just being more Jewish than I have been for quite awhile. I still can’t really say I’ve ever been to the South, because soul food and kosher food are not really the same thing, and Jew camp in a mountain isn’t really Atlanta. But, regardless of my geographic location, I had a great time.

I grew up Jewish, but the religion wasn’t really the main part of it, and I decided on my own to quit being religious when I was about 13. Since then, I’ve found I really want to go back to it, but it’s been hard, because you feel very uncomfortable when you’re a college student but you were never bat mitzvah’ed and you don’t read any Hebrew. Hillel’s siddurim do not have romanized transliteration of Hebrew, so I am completely lost when I go to services, and that is why I bought a teach-yourself-Hebrew book. I have yet to open it, but it’s a start.

Since we were really there for training, we spent a lot of time clustered up with another campus, Rutgers in my case (and our cluster was cluster F, so we had a lot of fun with that), and did bonding things and leadership things and peer networking things, since that’s the basis of our internship. However, we also did a fair amount of Jewish learning, and since I was there over the weekend, we had Shabbat stuff to do that was wonderful.

Before this summer, it had probably been about seven years since I had attended a Friday night service. While I was in Uruguay, we went to services, but as I wrote, I didn’t always enjoy them, though just the feeling of being around people chanting in Hebrew was very comforting. This Friday, though, was the best feeling I had felt in a long time. It made this summer finally feel like summer (magical), and it made me feel as if going to services more often (and taking a b’nai mitzvah class if I can find any free time and more participants) would really help me keep my sanity. I loved it.

Though this is a very ancient tradition, the custom of wearing white on Shabbat has kind of died, I think. But it is apparently a camp-y thing to do, so almost everyone was wearing all or mostly white as we had three processionals to the outside arena where we met, sang, danced horas, and learned other nigunim (songs without words, but sung with many voices including things like “lai lai lai” or “bim bim bom”). Then there were many options for services, and while I could have gone to a traditional one, I chose to stay for the one that other students had put together, which was not very religious, but included singing, active resting by learning about yoga, discussion, reading, etc. I forgot how wonderful it is to go to a service, and I re-familiarized myself with songs, terms such as “d’var torah” (a chosen reading from the Torah that is used to start a discussion about a value, current event, book, or whatever), and just the customs that I grew up participating in (though in a very lax, reform way). I felt really uncomfortable a lot of the time, like on Saturday morning, because I had never been to a morning Shabbat service, and I still don’t know all of the mourner’s kaddish or every song to sing, but even in my moments of discomfort, I’ve scarcely felt so peaceful in recent memory.

I love being Jewish. I can’t wait to become more so this year.

Next time, a blog about other ways to be Jewish, and other things I learned.

oh, and

Somehow in my last post I forgot to connect the two issues, but I think they’re related, which is why I wrote about both of them. There is a problem with people thinking that audience is the same thing as genre, and then booksellers and librarians shelve books in the wrong way, and then publishers don’t realize that they don’t have to be marketing books the way they are. The reason we don’t have more books with nonwhite people on the cover is partly because the covers that do have them are in the “urban fiction” section or somewhere similar. And this is also the problem with developing a national literature. We want to have one, but we try so hard to divide things by race and ethnicity because black people are the only people who want to read “black fiction,” so we can’t just have one place for everything.

I’m terrible at explaining this stuff. Someday I’ll do better.

dearth. of lots of things.

Yesterday, while I was waiting for my final flight home from LAX, I decided I wanted to buy a magazine. That was silly, because I knew I would have lots of magazines waiting for me when I got home (I subscribe to Interview, Glamour, Latina, Essence, American Songwriter, and Nylon), plus all the online reading I have been starting to do (Narrative, the New Yorker, Necessary Fiction, YA Fresh), plus all the hundreds of books I want to read in general. But as I’ve been a bit disappointed with my reading, and as García Márquez is very tedious in a second language, I said, “What the hell,” and spent $6 (why are magazines on newsstands so damn expensive!?) on the Ficion 2009 issue of Atlantic.

I’m not quite finished reading it (I read all magazines cover to cover, except sometimes Interview, because I’m getting a bit tired of it and “society pages” really don’t interest me at all–I would like to do a post about magazines later), but I did get to the set of four essays on the topic of “national literature” and whether it exists. The four writers addressing the question of the place of “national literature” in an increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan world were Margaret Atwood, Joseph O’Neill, Monica Ali, and Anne Michaels. Unfortunately, the only of these authors that I have read is Atwood, but then again, most of the most helpful books I’ve read on writing are by authors whose novels I have not actually read. Funny how that works.

The essays were short, so they couldn’t really go in depth, but I was pretty disappointed with the lack of opinion or resolution in any of them. None of the authors really seemed to end with their opinion; most of the essays just talked about their feelings about how they fit into a lot of “communites” (Do I write as a woman? As a Canadian? As a writer? asks Atwood; Not all Brits look, feel, and act the same, Ali points out) and how that makes it harder to define a national literature. But I didn’t really think that was the point, really, and I think all four writers really missed the mark and missed out on an opportunity to talk about the way “genre” is defined today and how that helps and hinders the formation of a national literature. But, you may as well still go on and readBorder Crossings, because the essays are well-written, if boring.

So now I’m home and catching up on my blog reading, and I went over to one of my favorite blogs, especially when it comes to blogs about the world of publishing, Jacket Whys. One of the latest posts is about the amount of human models on YA books this year, and how few of them feature black models. I was so happy to see this addressed, as this was always something I noticed as a child. There was rarely a book that had a character that looked me, and almost never are there books about non-white characters that don’t have major plot devices revolving around the fact that that character is non-white. For example, you could never do the show “Malcolm in the Middle” (blue collar family with unexpected genius middle child) unless you also added that the family had just moved into a predominantly white neighborhood and had trouble assimilating, or if you had an episode where one character starts dating a white girl and has issues with it, or something. Those things drive me crazy. I have no problem if a white writer wants to write a white character, or if a non-white writer wants to write one. Write what you want; it’s your prerogative. But it always bothered me that a writer couldn’t just change someone to be black or Hispanic or Native American without changing most of the arc of the story. So many stories you read don’t have to be about white people; they just are because that’s the default. So many books I read as a child where I said, oh, that character could so be me! But no, the model has blonde hair and celebrates Christmas, so no. Damn.

Obviously, a lot of this problem is general hegemony and the fact that white is still the driving cultural force of our nation. Peggy McIntosh wrote this great essay years ago that I’ve read for classes, recommended to friends as reading, and just link to very often because it’s fabulous and often helps illuminate for white friends why it is “harder” for me to get by sometimes, even though I’ve been raised mostly white. Unpacking the Knapsack of White Privilege is an excellent, quick read that everybody should check out, regardless of their racial or ethnic background. I commented on Jacket Whys and linked to it and am still reading the other excellent comments.

However, I want to know what it is that could help facilitate a change in publishing. Of course more writers need to abandon the magical Negro and other stereotypes and write diverse characters, but since writing is only one part of the package that is a book, I wonder what else it is that keeps us from seeing more interesting protagonists and models on covers. Do we not have enough non-white editors and graphic designers? Do we lack models? Not working in the publishing industry, I can only go so far to make suggestions as to what we need. I’m confused as to the easiest way to solve the problem.

School Library Journal also published a fantastic article on race in literature. Read it, do.

summer reading #3

Haven’t updated for awhile, and I am moving very slowly in some books, but I also read very quickly some others. What else is there to do but read when you are stuck in bed with the flu? Now, of course, I am better and off on adventures, but here are the latest books I’ve finished.

I have not read books that I expected to read, due again to the fact that I did not expect to be sick with so much free time. So I’ve been a bit disappointed in things. But such is life.

1. Cocktails for Three by Madeleine Wickham. So disappointing! This woman, who also writes as Sophie Kinsella, has always impressed me, because while she writes chick lit, which basically means dumb, she writes it in a way that makes you want to read it, because both she and her characters have clearly read other books before. This one, however, was utter crap and made me really, really angry. Pregnant women being alcoholics, women being stupid, and just stupid, stupid, stupid. Don’t read it. That is all.

2. Social Justice: A Jewish Perspective by Bernardo Kliksberg. This was lent to me by a friend at Hillel after I was told to stay in bed for three days, and it’s a very good and pretty easy read. Since this is a vaguely religious trip that I’m on (or was on, since now I’m just vacationing and traveling), it was nice to kind of get in touch with my Judaism a bit and remember that there are ways I identify with my religion, even if for me it’s not about being completely stuck in the past or really Orthodox or keeping kosher. Even if you’re not Jewish, this book has a good outline of what social justice is and why it’s important that it exist. It didn’t exactly tell me things I didn’t believe in before, but it was nice to have them outlined well.

3. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I didn’t want to read this book, but my friend lent it to me and I figured I’d at least look at it, and then I finished it in a day. Whoops. I guess part of my reasoning for not wanting to read it was my resentment for Americans who do “spiritual” things to be trendy, and also because I generally feel kind of icky when talking about it. For me, religion is very personal, and while I’m glad I have my beliefs, I don’t particularly care if anyone knows them or not and I don’t really enjoy evangelicals who are constantly trying to tell me what they believe and why I should believe it, too. Maybe that’s mean of me, but it makes me feel uncomfortable. But this book, even when it got borderline sappy, was a great read simply because Gilbert was a really great storyteller. I haven’t felt like writing lately, and in the middle of the book I just had to run upstairs and journal. And it reminded me how much I enjoy traveling, even when I don’t, and how much I like to write personal essays. So I would recommend the book above all. Plus, who wouldn’t want to read about living in Italy?

So that makes 10 books thus far through the summer, and I’m well into the middle of two/three others (a García Márquez book that I’m reading simultaneously in Spanish and in translation and a book of poems). We’ll see if I make it to my goal of thirty, though. And hopefully the rest of the books I read will be better.

Stuff about my latest adventures later.

montevideo 1

Now I know I am acclimating to being in Latin America, because it does not feel at all like 4:30 in the morning. I just got back to the hotel, and most people are still out at another club. I was with Caryn and Danny and two uruguayas, Melu and Lili, and when we left the club El Pony Pisador, we decided against paying a cover charge for an overcrowded club, so we went to McDonald’s (elegant and gorgeous and really nice here!) and hung out, speaking in Spanglish.

I feel very immersed in Spanish already, and I’ve only been here since Monday afternoon. Oh, I guess that’s a week already. I really like it here. I don’t feel entirely comfortable, but I think that’s a good thing. Many of the participants don’t speak much Spanish, so we’ve been divided into two groups. Thankfully, my group doesn’t have to sit around learning grammar, since I feel like every class I take “teaches” me the same thing over and over again. Instead, we are learning about Uruguayan culture, politics, and slang. We’ve learned a few things, like formal phrases for letters, and much more vocabulary, but mostly we just get to practice conversing by talking about things that are actually interesting. I love it. I’m just not a huge fan of having class at 8:30 in the morning, because it lasts for four hours.

After class we eat out, and then I go to my internship at Un Techo Para Mi País. It’s like the Habitat for Humanity of Latin America, except they actually do a whole lot more. Thursday I went to a shanty town, which was a really, really powerful experience. We have poverty in the US, but it does not look like this. Or smell like this. At the risk of sounding really cheesy, I felt extremely humbled. And then afterwards, I left and met everyone at the hotel, and we went to Teatro Solís to see the opera “Nabucco.” So it was a day of highs and lows. The opera was pretty good, and the theatre is absolutely beautiful.

Since I am here on a Jewish program, we are required to go to Shabbat services each Friday. So last night I went with most of the group (there are 9 girls and 2 boys) to the Orthodox synagogue. I did not like it.

More than that. I felt pretty offended by it.

I won’t say that I know everything or even a lot about Judaism. My family has always been more culturally Jewish than religiously so, but it’s not like I don’t know anything. And never having experienced Orthodox Judaism aside from here, I can’t say how common this is. But first of all, this separating men and women thing is a tradition that I think needs to go. Everyone has an equal right to enjoy and participate in a religious activity. After the service, people asked if I liked it, and I wanted to say, “How could I? It wasn’t meant for me to enjoy.” The women were put into a small part of the room, and we had a glass partition up that had lines across it so we couldn’t see much. We were perpendicular to the podium, and we were crammed. The partition was a two-way mirror so that the men just saw themselves. But they were in the main part of the synagogue, and they had room to dance and move around and greet each other.

This, to me, seems like an anti-religious practice. Religion is meant to bring people together, and I didn’t feel like any part of the service was for me.

I will say, though, that the book they used for the service was great. I really appreciate transliterations of Hebrew, because I can’t read it. I do want to learn, so it actually helps to have a transliteration written under the Hebrew, so that you can match the sounds together. And they also had a paragraph on each page explaining the significance and meaning of the prayer, along with the direct translation. That actually feels very Jewish, because I think a lot of what makes this religion wonderful is that you aren’t expected to blindly follow things; instead it is about asking questions and thinking about things and discussing issues. So I really liked that.

After the service we were all assigned Uruguayan families for dinner. Jessica and I went with a man and his 11-year-old son, and when we arrived at their gorgeous penthouse overlooking the Rio de la Plata, we met his older son and wife. They had a daughter who was in Rio de Janeiro for a wedding.

I messed up the ritual of handwashing, and I felt bad, but I tried. We sang songs together which I knew, and then the father said the other prayers for the challah and the wine. The dinner was amazing. So many meals have three courses here; I am going to come back home in five weeks weighing at least 10 pounds more.

There’s so much to say about my experiences that I don’t know how to write it all. That’s the problem with traveling. I have barely been journaling at all, because I just don’t know where to begin. This is why novels written as journals are implausible; it’s impossible to remember your entire day and have time to write it all. When I travel, I like to be drenched with the experience, so I don’t usually remember that I should go get away from it and write it down. It’ll stick in my head, I’m sure. But I’ll also try to write about it here.

normal people and famous people and those in between

So I touched Ira Glass tonight.

I also heard him speak and saw him, you know, like all the other people in Centennial Hall did. But then my friends and I went up and acted silly and talked to him.

Anyone who doesn’t already know how awesome Ira Glass is is a fool. Hi spresentation was pretty awesome. He just has such a wonderful voice, and it was just an interesting presentation, though in some ways disappointing. Ira Glass is not someone you feel like listening to while sitting upright in a chair, smooshed against lots of other people. For some reason I felt one of my headaches come on, which didn’t make it any nicer to be uncomfortable, but it’s also one of those things that is weird to experience in person when you’re used to radio or the podcast. I wanted to be lying on the floor or on my bed with my eyes closed. That is how you should experience This American Life.

Regardless, it was cool. And of course I went up with the rest of my friends afterwards to go talk to him. I wanted him to sign my ticket, since I didn’t have anything else for him to sign. And while waiting in line was fun, just because we all got to hang out and because I talked to this other nice random girl who is about to graduate from law school. But meeting interesting people in this way makes me feel very, very uncomfortable, because I can never make myself look smart or interesting while doing it. Even if I had a burning question to ask Ira Glass, it would never be something that would just come to me while I’m standing in line with a ticket stub and a ballpoint pen. Just like people want to wait after concerts to meet the artist, it was something that needed to be done, but I also didn’t want to. I’m sure if I spent hours with him, we’d find something interesting to talk about, and I could actually make myself appear as smart as I’m pretty sure I am, and I could ask some good questions. But accosting someone after a performance is awkward and nerve wracking. I’m not one of those people who can just go up to a stranger and spill all of my life and dreams and ask for advice. Is it because I know the advice will likely be something I’ve heard before or because I know the advice of a famous person isn’t necessarily better than the advice of someone who knows me better? I’m not sure.

It’s a strange form of networking, and I’m not sure whether it’s better to be good at it or bad at it. Generally, I am pretty good at meeting strangers (at least adults and professionals…I’m terrible at people my own age) and being friendly, talking about myself, and ending up with advice or encouragement or connections or a job offer or something. It’s this conniving but genuine thing that I’ve sort of mastered. And I’ve just been lucky, I think. But when you’re meeting someone who is famous, even when they’re only famous to you, like Ira Glass, it’s hard to gush without sounding swoony, to ask for advice without being a cliché, to ask questions without being boring. I never know what to do.

Not that I’ve met a huge amount of famous people. But it’s still awkward. I hate listening to people fall over themselves at a book signing or an event like this one, and I know it’s mean of me. Who am I to tell someone to be less excited? Just because I’m inhuman doesn’t mean they need to be. But it’s so embarrassing. You know those times when other people, even when they’re strangers, do something so weird that they’re not embarrassed by that you end up being embarrassed for them, just because the thing you share is both being human? It’s horrible. I’m such a bitch sometimes.

crowd theory

I’ve realized that the reason I don’t enjoy large, loud concerts is because I am less capable than most at succumbing to a collective. Last night was the huge stadium concert, which actually looked fairly unimpressive, because the stadium seats 56,000, and about 12,000 people actually showed up to the concert, though close to none actually went to the entire six-hour event.

Anyway. Not my point. (But they should have had it in McKale so it would look more impressive.) I really, really enjoy good concerts. I do. I adore music, and there is something really special about witnessing its creation and performance live. But I am really not a very flamboyant spectator. This is how I know I would not be a good famous singer, much as I’d like to be famous. I can’t really free myself to move around a lot or scream or anything. I sing along, yes. That I feel almost compelled to do, and it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. But moving around and waving my arms and showing “my diamonds,” as Jay-Z asked us all to do, is hard to do.

Waving my arms is the worst. I feel supremely uncomfortable and self-conscious when I am doing that. I’m sure it’s actually gotten harder since leaving high school, since I don’t dance anymore. But it’s never been something I’ve been able to do naturally. It’s a strange feeling, but even though I feel stupid not doing it, I feel like I have a physical aversion to doing it if I actually try to be one of the crowd.

There’s this thing called crowd psychology, and you can google it or look it up on Wikipedia if you like. I think the best example of this is English soccer fans, if only because I’ve already had a long conversation with my friends about that particular theory and how it’s manifested in that group. But basically, it’s the idea that people do things they would never do otherwise when they’re in groups, and it’s also very easy to be caught up in a sort of collective conscious and feel the same, act the same, and react the same. This is how people can end up rioting after they win a soccer game, or how they can feel an amazing rush of adrenaline when they and their friends go after a rival team’s fans and start beating them to a pulp. Ahh, the rush of physical fighting! Such a guy thing. I really don’t get it.

This is also how people feel when they go to a school football game and find themselves with a passion for their team that they never knew they had, or they notice that they’ve never had such a potty mouth before, or they realize that they and everyone around them is saying the same things, “oh!”ing at the exact same time, stamping their feet together, clapping the same rhythmic pattern, or what have you. Crowd psychology. Try and say you’ve never experienced this.

But I swear I don’t have that. I feel detached from other people almost all the time. I have definitely felt some moments of belonging, so I guess I’m not a complete alien, but those moments are things like bonding with the party room crew while we were sitting by the haunted house at Bennington College, or snapping a photo with my Kenya group soon after we’d returned, just before we went inside to graduate from high school. Group pride, certainly, and a sort of collective understanding and a feeling like in that moment, I loved those people more than anyone else, but never have I really lost myself in a moment that became a collective moment.

Even when Obama won the presidency, ecstatic as I was, I felt like I was faking it. I cheered because, yes, it was a wonderful thing, and because everyone else was doing it, but it was conscious. That’s not crowd psychology. It didn’t take me over; I just observed it and blended as well as I could. And even then, in a moment that I was truly happy and hopeful, I was not part of a collective conscious.

So last night, though I loosened up as the night went on, and I shouted the lyrics to “99 Problems” like nobody’s business, I felt completely aware of how out of my comfort zone I felt. And shouting the lyrics and dancing a bit was the only thing I did. My arms feel too heavy to wave them like everyone else; I don’t understand that whole diamonds thing because I’m definitely not as cool as I like to pretend I am; I did not shout out to Kelly Clarkson, “Kelly, I love you!”** repeatedly, and even if it had happened to be a Mariah Carey concert and I was thinking that same thing, I wouldn’t say it. I was lost in the musical conscious, but that’s not tangible, and it’s not even human. I am incapable of being part of a crowd.

I take back my earlier statement. I probably am an alien.

**This same girl at one point turned back to me and asked me something; I think the question was, “Aren’t you so happy right now?” which, looking back, is a really nice feeling to have, and I just smiled, because I wasn’t yet ready to buy the whole Kelly Clarkson deal (though after her entire set, I am sold–hers may not be my favorite style of music, but the girl is well-trained. She can belt, she can sing, she can scream–all in one song). Later, Kelly played a song from her new album, and this girl immediately grabbed her BlackBerry and googled the lyrics so she could sing along. Best. Concert. Moment. Ever.

***Also, check out Cindy Pon’s blog, book, and contest. She’s giving away a beautiful brush painting/bookstore gift certificate, plus a signed copy of her book, which looks awesome. You should click on the book cover now. Do it.

who am i to you: lessons in diversity

Henry read two of my stories to help me find one to submit for my application, and he wrote an interesting comment on one of them:

People probably say this shit to you all the time and I know you must hate it, but I like the multi-ethnicity of these characters, and the fact that their race is not the point. It’s fresh, and makes them more endearing and not copied-from-tv-teen-dramas trite.

People don’t say that to me all the time, though I think about it a lot, and I both love and hate it. I don’t think it’s all that hard to do. All I did was give one character a Japanese name and then had her act like any silly, bitchy, ditzy drunk girl would act. Another kid I described as “Hispanic,” which should generally be avoided, but using it once is fine, I think. Another character had a thought where she was glad that she was black so that no one could see her blush. How simple!

I have a huge problem in literature with things like “African American fiction” being a genre, and an extreme inability to have a main character in a book be Jewish, Mexican, Hindu, black, or anything else without making the main conflict in the story about that person’s cultural or ethnic identity clashing with the mainstream. Want to know why we can’t all get along, world? Because our representations of culture refuse to let that happen.

i, hannah

Yeardley Smith writes books now. I’m reading her children’s novel, I, Lorelei, right now and loving it. It just came out earlier this month, I think, and my review should be out soon.

I think everyone knows at this point how much I love children’s books. I think generally, a children’s book says a lot more about the current state of society and culture than your average adult novel. Of course, there are good novels and bad novels in every area, and “children’s book” is not a genre, it just denotes an audience, but still. I will go out on a limb and say that. And they’re just fun.

This one is good for many reasons, but I’ll only talk about two of them so I’m not cheating on my review. First, I loved the book from the first page because of the Marilyn Monroe references and the subsequent references to Scarlett O’Hara, “West Side Story,” and other things that adults will recognize, and un-cool kids will not. Lorelei’s middle name is Lee, which is a pretty obvious homage to the Lorelei Lee of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Hooray!

And even better is the thing that I am always trying to explain to other writers and just to people in general, about how simple and necessary it is to subtly insert diversity into novels. Diversity is not a novel only about Mexican or Japanese or black people. It’s also not when you insert one Jewish character in a story for the sole purpose of inviting some sort of conflict or plot device directly relating to that person’s being Jewish. Sometimes people who aren’t WASPs just exist, and they’re not strange or different as a result. I, Lorelei has a perfect insertion of this–the “cutest boy” in the sixth grade is biracial. Perfect. Love it.

Any little thing can make me happy.

colorblind

Race: a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important.
Ethnicity: shared cultural heritage
Minority group: any category of people distinguished by physical or cultural differences that a society sets apart and subordinates.
Not a number issue, but a power issue

I often forget that I am black.

Then, when I remember, the next thing I forget is that I am not black. I am half black and half white. I am mixed. Biracial, multiethnic.

This is, sadly, not that uncommon in my daily life. Or maybe that’s not sad. While culture and ethnicity are important to identity, I don’t think race is nearly as important. Skin color should just be an aesthetic thing, like when you’re picking out an outfit or makeup and something looks particularly gorgeous because it brings out your cocoa skin or your blue eyes or whatever. But maybe it’s strange, because remembering your skin color is one (though obviously not the only, nor the most important) way to remind yourself of your culture and ethnicity, and to find others to identify with.

I usually remember after I’ve hooked up with someone. Part of this is my very complicated ethnic and cultural background, I think. It’s also the media, because you know on TV and in movies, white people only date and marry white people, black people only date and marry black people, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians, etc. I don’t feel all that “black.” I don’t know if anyone does. I don’t know how it would feel. But not growing up with a black family, I guess it’s not the immediate association I jump to when I’m thinking of my ethnic identity. It is the culture to which I belong that I have been least exposed to in my life.

When I process the hookup, or the date, if I’m actually being that respectable, I marvel at how wondrous and interesting it is that the person wanted to date/hook up with me. Since college started, the majority of the people I have hooked up with or dated have been white. I don’t really care, since I like who I like, not who I choose to like, and that stuff doesn’t really matter. But while it doesn’t matter, it also does, and when I think about it, I become paranoid wondering why they picked me. Is it that I seem exotic for not being white? Am I just the type of girl (ethnically speaking–you know how we all have the types of people we’re attracted to, and racial and ethnic identity is sometimes one of those things) they like? Or do they just not see the color? It’s not that I think people are shallow. It’s that we’re a color-based society, and sometimes it just baffles me. Are we all actually colorblind? Are we just colorblind in terms of who we like? Do we pick based on color?

It’s one of those things like wondering whether someone likes you for your looks or your personality. Like if I date a white person, I wonder if they just see me as “white.” Maybe they don’t but they think I’m interesting or I “act white.” Maybe they don’t see a thing and it’s just personality. Maybe I’m just really exotic looking. It’s so stupid, but I don’t understand how it works.