Where Worlds Meet

Regina woke from her nap to a tapping sound. Rat-Tat-Tat…. Rat-Tat-Tat. She rubbed the sleep from her bleery eyes and headed toward her window. Outside was the her counterpoint, her relief. Michael was waiting for her with what looked like a backpack.

“What?” she said with what she hoped sounded like contempt.

“Look I’m sorry about today, the guys, the just don’t understand. They think its funny, like its a joke or something.”

“Michael you shrugged me off at lunch and then ditched me after school! Why would I go anywhere with you?”

“Regina I’m sorry, I’m trying to make up for it, I’m trying tomake it work.”

She paused for a moment. He seems sincere, I want to go with him, I miss him. I’ll go “Whats that for?” Regina asked.

“Stop being so nosy and get out here already, we have to hurry.”

“You’re ridiculous!” Regina said laughingly and climbed out the window.

The two of them climbed into the beat up old 1990 Landcruiser that Michael had gotten for his 16th birthday and pulled away from the house. They drove and drove until they reached the end. The place where they always went to get away. To everyone else it was a parking lot next to a small airport perched on a peninsula between two shipping channels. They parked the car where channel met. That one point where two different paths coming from different cities combined.

To them it was a launching point to a place without boundries, rules, guidelines, or pressures. A place where they could just be. There were sailboats and houseboats dotting the water. Across the channel the sulfur mines billowed that familiar odorous smoke into the blue and orange sky. As the sun continued to fall and the world began to gray, they would lay in the bed of the truck wrapped in a blanket and like the smoke, just drift away. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

When You Marry

Pages taken out of a 1962 textbook supposedly used for health studies class.

Mclaughlin and Loving

The fight for civil rights and in turn the right to love was fought through the American legal system.  Two cases specifically helped reverse the legal barriers against inter-racial relationships. 

McLaughlin v. Florida was a case where the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a cohabitation law in Florida was unconstitutional. The law had prohibited two people from living in the same home if one of them were black and the other person white. The nullification of this law led to the Pace v. Alabama ruling which had previously said that anti-miscegation laws were constitutional.  These two rulings led up to what is largely considered the landmark case on the legality of race-based marriager: Lovings V. Virgina. The Lovings case would declare the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924“, unconstitutional and put an end to all anti- miscegenation.

Project Proposal. Expressing Experience.

1) What specific experience will you undertake the task of, and take responsibility for, expressing? What is the concrete historical context?

I would like to attempt to express the confusion, frustration, and isolation that is experienced by idividuals of mixed-race backgrounds. More specifically, this will evaluate the struggle to cope with the individual identity as well as relating to individual cultures and society.
1) Historically, I woul like this to take place during the 1960s. This was an era of many racial tensions and would be the most suitable envioronment within which to evaluate the experience of multi-racial persons.
B) The illustrated experience will address the issues of personal identity throught the issues of race/ethnicity and social class. This experience will also include the struggle to identify with an individual or mixed culture in the 1960s era society.
2.) “Explanation” or “account” of this experience from a conventional view? What is the dominant understanding?

The conventional view of this experience is taken from the account of my girlfriend and her status as a mixed-race individual. She is half Hatian and half Caucasian. Her mixed race has caused her to experience a number of difficult situations both personally and socially. The most recent of which was the combative thanksgiving dinner between the two racial sides of her family. As someone who has been involved with a person of mixed race for an extended period of time, I believe that my relationship has exposed me to at least part of her daily experience. The 1960s time period is a supplementary detail that will facilitate my expression of Aiden’s experience.

SOURCE: The Biracial Child: Embracing Ethnic Identity

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/204136/the_biracial_child_embracing_ethnic.html

The personal resonance for me in the present is that this type of experience affects my own life. The struggles and conflicts experienced by my girlfriend impact my own individual experiences. The advantage of this personal resonance is that it enables me to gain a better understanding of the struggles of someone who has a direct impact on me. My forst-hand experience with the subject should also make me more capable of expressing the experience accurately.

4) One cultural narrative or image that is prominent in your memory (any media)?

One form of media that could be used in a supplementary manner would be the movie Crash. Crash is a movie that attempts to express the lives of people, rich, poor, good, bad, black, white and every other shade of human being that inhabits Los Angeles. The individual lives impact eachother by intertwining the struggles of the individuals.

5) One “forgotten” (or overlooked, neglected) aspect or element?
People often attempt to address the issue of race on a general basis, preferring to refer to racial groups and not the specific individuals. The focus on the experience of one individual should shed light on some of the struggles that are not typically addressed in the usual discussion on race-relations.

6) One lesson (abstract) and one technqiue (specific) from one of our relay novels, that you will implement? (”Analogy” in CATTt)

I believe that Pynchon’s structure in “The Crying of Lot 49″ would be the most suitable for expressing this specific experience. The evolution of the experience only makes the struggle with identity even more complex. I feel as if the struggle of mixed race individuals can best be expressed by illustrating their difficulty in finding “acceptance” within their respective racial groups.

7) A potential interface? and A potential figure (expressive)?

One potential interface for my character could be the recovered journal of her mother that would illustrate a parallel to my main character’s own experiences. Through this journal, my main character would be able to lik her own struggles to the struggles of previous generations.