Oddflower Issue #1 by Oddflower

ISSUE

Project Statement The idea for this story project jumped into existence during an evening work commute in 2011. A few years prior, I'd conducted an interview with Miss Jack Davey, lead singer of the (awesome) L.A.-based duo, J*Davey. When asked about black music’s blurred lines, she told me that, “in junior high, when all my friends were listening to R. Kelly, I was secretly hiding away listening to 'Nevermind' by Nirvana. That was my own little private joy. My friends would be like, ‘you listen to Led Zeppelin?!’” That single statement brought forth memories of my own experience as a teen secretly harboring rock music fascinations. That night, I set out to bring this commonality to life, creating a compilation of short stories that gave other women the space to share about growing up as the black girl who just never quite fit in. This project has stopped, started, shifted, and morphed more times than I can count, but has always been a passion and a labor of love. It’s honest, it’s eccentric, and it’s called Oddflower. Thank you to every writer who contributed her truth, and for the artists who helped make these stories shine. Thank you Miss Jack Davey, and thank you to every black girl and woman who creates and exists beyond the boundaries.

Black Girl Gone Country

Ashley M. Young

To Be Black and Different (2bb&D)

Andrea Graham

Come Out to Play

From Floating to Flying

Who Am I?

radio flyer

10 Yewande Omotoso 13 Shaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;a Thomas 15 Whitney Greer 18 G.M. JONES

EDITED BY: Andrea Boston // Co-Edited by: Candice Watkins Designed by: Jazminia C. Griffith Cover PHOTO credit: E.MICHELLE

b ack girl country iI

feel

lucky

tonight

born to

gone

fly

BY ASHLEY M. YOUNG

“She’s a wild one with an angel’s face, she’s a woman-child in a state of grace.” - Faith Hill, “Wild One”

“We got two lives—one we’re given and the other one we make.” - Mary Chapin Carpenter, “The Hard Way”

I outed myself as a country music listener when I was in 4th grade.

On Come On,” Chapin’s music became the soundtrack to my childhood.

I was sitting at my desk doing the morning warm-up next to my best friend Sumon, a girl who I thought was definitely too cool to be my friend. She was a pretty brown girl with silky hair who wore FUBU and listened to Juvenile, LL Cool J, Puff Daddy, and Biggie—all rappers whose albums hit it big in 1997. I must have been completely sidetracked by my worksheet because as I circled the answers, I started singing the theme song to our local area country music station: “98.7 WMZQ.”

During the tough times—my mother’s divorce and frequent bouts with depression—we sang Chapin’s words like a mother-daughter battle cry. Every morning, I’d listen to my mother’s voice, learn the lyrics, and sing along. It was a way of connecting without speaking and a way of learning without traditional lessons; the things my mother couldn’t explain to me, she taught me through song. I learned how hard the divorce had been for her when she belted out the notes to “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” a song about lovers separating:

Until that point, I had kept my country music listening a secret from my best friend, cautious not to sing any Shania Twain in public and even more careful to conceal the covers of my CD’s in my Discman. I knew if I had been outed, I’d endure endless ridicule from my peer group, or even worse, some bizarre listening/hazing ritual that my friends thought would convince me to listen to rap and R&B. I knew the first thing people would say to me: Black girls don’t listen to country Music. I had heard it said before and the last thing I wanted was yet another reason for everyone to call me a white girl.

“ S he packs his suitcase, she sits and waits, With no expression, upon her face When she was thirty-six, she met him at their door She said,‘I’m sorry, but I don’t love you anymore.’”

Sumon lifted her head from her worksheet and looked at me in shock. “Isn’t that a country music station?” she asked. I was definitely caught, so I tried as best as I could to cover my ass.

I learned that love was a funny, fragile thing and that it was somehow worth feeling brokenhearted. My mother built herself up with song when the world felt at its darkest and loneliest.

“Yeah, I think so. I must have heard it surfing through the stations,” I said, barely looking at her.

During her recovery from the loss of her marriage, she taught me about love and passion. In those days, she yearned for it badly, suddenly becoming a single mother left to raise me on her own. I’d bounce around the living room on Saturday mornings, our boom box blasting Chapin’s “Passionate Kisses” on repeat while my mother attempted breakfast in the kitchen. It was a song about wanting and deserving and I was learning that a woman had a right to her own primal urges. My mother smiled and let me sing my favorite lines on my own:

I’d saved myself for an instant, but it wasn’t long before people learned that not only did I listen to country music, I loved country music. My mother raised me on country. When I was old enough to ask her why, she told me it was because country music had no profanity, was easy to sing along with, and always managed to tell a story—even if that story was about losing a tractor, a dog, or a woman. My mother loved to sing and from the time I could speak, the two of us always sang country music together. I was five when she introduced me to Mary Chapin Carpenter, a stocky blonde woman whose fusion of folk and country still resonate with me. From the first day my mother popped in the cassette tape “Come

“ D o I want too much, am I going overboard 5

to want that touch? Shout it out to the night Give me what I deserve, cause it’s my right Shouldn't I have this, Shouldn't I have this Shouldn't I have all of this and passionate kisses from you.” When I was six, my mother took me to my first Chapin concert. She told me we’d have to sing along quietly as not to disturb the other audience members. But I didn’t know how to sing softly. We sang so loud and so long, that my throat hurt. I stood on my chair to get the best view of Chapin’s band and sang “I Feel Lucky” at the top of my lungs. Everyone around me couldn’t help but laugh at the tiny, giddy black girl, singing the lyrics to a song about smoking, betting, and cat-calling. I barely understood the words but loved the thought of feeling like a sexy woman on the prowl, so I shamelessly belted out my favorite part:

“ I feel lucky, oh oh oh, I feel lucky yeah Hey Dwight, hey Lyle, boys you don’t have to fight Hot dog, I feel lucky tonight I feel lucky, brrr I feel lucky, yeah Think I’ll flip a coin, I’m a winner either way Mmmmm, I feel lucky today.” Chapin was teaching me that music could get me through anything, and so was my mother. I was too young to know that her sadness was deeper than my parents’ separation. It stemmed from years of ups and downs—a relentless battle with bipolar disorder. But when Chapin played, my mother

always calmed, sang, smiled, and retreated to the stories country music told. The women in country were helping my mother get through the day and they were ushering me through puberty, recovery, and times of mourning. When my grandmother died from a lengthy battle with cancer, my mother and I held each other and turned to songs for comfort. We listened to Chapin’s “In My Heaven,” imagining a place where my grandmother could rest and find peace in another life. Through the tears, we found solace and comfort in the words:

“ N othing shatters nothing breaks Nothing hurts and nothing aches We’ve got ourselves one helluva place In my heaven.” In mourning, I found Lori McKenna, a Boston folk singer whose voice echoed in my head, haunted with a southern twang. Her songs were the only sounds that conjured up clear images of my grandmother healthy in her house in Ahoskie, North Carolina, watering her flower beds, sorting books in her living room library, and standing in her country kitchen frying thin apple slices to accompany cheese toast, eggs, and bacon. My heart ached when my grandmother died from cancer, but I wrapped myself in Lori McKenna’s voice and learned to pace my panicked breathing and heavy tears to her music. When it came time for me to choose colleges, I dreamed of rural land, quiet pastures, and panoramic landscapes—a quiet background that I was sure would aid me through hours of endless studies. I found that place in the Dixie Chicks’ lyrics, a fierce all-female band wielding violins, fiddles, guitars, and voices that put rock into country. On my early morning drives to high school during my senior year, I sang “Wide Open Spaces,” desperate to get out of my suburban town and desperate to be on my own. I’d grip the steering wheel tight driving into the sunset as I sang out the words:

“ S he needs wide open spaces Room to make her big mistakes She needs new faces She knows the high stakes She knows the high stakes.”

that rain Turns to ice and your whole world just starts snowing I don’t have the luxury of knowing.”

At that point in my suburban Maryland high school, I was so fed up with my town and was dying to get out. So I sang my country music on full blast with the windows down. I learned not to be ashamed of being a cowgirl because country music had gotten me through the hardest times of my life and I knew it would follow me to college to help me combat even harder times to come. I was learning to love folk songs and punk rock—coming out as a dyke to music by Ani DiFranco, completing my pseudo-goth phase with headphones blasting System of a Down, and starting my fan girl period with a brief obsession with Good Charlotte.

These days, the only woman who catches me singing country tunes is my partner, Sara. Fortunately, she doesn’t tease me mercilessly or call me a white girl. She just smiles at me singing to myself in the bathroom mirror, chuckling at my Carolina twang calling out some lonely woman’s aching. She accepts that country is what keeps me grounded and what rocks my soul to rest. After many years of trying to deny it, so do I.

About Ashley Young: Ashley Young is a Black Queer feminist writer and poet working as an editor in New York City. She received her B.A. from Hampshire College where she studied education and theater and is earning a certification in copyediting at New York University. She is a 2010 Voices of Our Nations Art Foundation Poetry Fellow and a 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation Creative Non-fiction Fellow. Her feminist poetry and prose have been published in Elixher Magazine, Rkvry Quarterly Literary Journal, Autostraddle, Her Circle Magazine and more. She authored a chapter in “Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion” (Seal Press, 2012) and is working on her first novel, an Audre Lorde-inspired biomythography.

College brought me back to my country roots. Amherst, Massachusetts became my rural playground, and I listened to Sara Evans’ “Born to Fly” everyday on my bus rides from one liberal arts institution to the next. I turned to old Nancy Griffith albums when I was sad about my grandmother or frustrated about separating from my mother. Country music had anchored my relationship with my mother and it gracefully guided me into the uncertainty of womanhood. I never stopped listening to country, and I never stopped loving it. Now a woman-child making my way in New York City, country fuels my desperation for independence and aids me in dealing with my mother. The same woman who gave me country now lashes out as I grow away with a life of my own. Sometimes I can’t tell if it’s the depression, or the mania, or the grieving of a mother losing her child to adulthood. I never know what her moods might be when I see her, but I still use music the way she taught me, only now it’s to comfort myself from my distance from her. I’ve been listening to Lori McKenna’s cover of “Luxury of Knowing,” belting out the words in the shower when I’m feeling weak:

“ J ust when I think you’re a hurricane, You freeze right over and all

2b & by Andrea Graham

In the '90s, and into the turn of the century, hip-hop fashion reigned supreme.

It was the apparel du jour in rap and R&B, and young black boys and girls followed suit, emulating the latest styles for their own piece of celebrity cool. Brand names like FUBU, Baby Phat, Sean John, Phat Farm, and Rocawear became staples of black fashion and were prominently displayed on shirts, caps, handbags, and dresses. In my middle school and high school years, my classmates’ style could be seen in the hallways on any given day. The boys wore oversized shirts and baggy pants, while the girls dressed in form-fitting tops and hip-hugging jeans with a distinct flavor.

My style was entirely different. I took my inspiration from skater fashion and the depths of my imagination, where I came up with interesting concepts for outfits. In my eyes, I was expressing my creativity, but to others I was just weird. I was violating some unspoken rule through my style of dress, and for that, I was generally misunderstood and unaccepted. As a pre-teen, my shyness placed me outside the popular crowd, but when I started experimenting with fashion in sixth grade, my outcast status reached a new level. Now, not only did I have the misfortune of being shy, but I was also

labeled “weird.” I was weird because I wore skater brands like JNCO, or as my classmates called it: “white people’s clothing.” Every time I went shopping, those clothes immediately caught my eye. I loved the graffiti-inspired art designs and the wide-leg flare of the pants. No one was going to convince me to change my preference in clothes to look more “black.” The schools in my neighborhood were racially and ethnically diverse, but there were still consequences for dressing or behaving in a manner that could be considered counterculture. Many of my classmates made it clear that I was not meeting certain standards of blackness. As a result, they refused to associate with me, made snide remarks, or silently shot me dirty looks of disapproval. This bothered me of course, but I never had the urge to change my style in exchange for a small token of acceptance. I took my affinity for skater-wear with me to high school, but my style soon evolved from edgy and alternative, to eclectic and funky. I rocked anything from '70s inspired ensembles (with big hoop earrings and flowers tucked in my hair), to daring outfits with unique patterns, cuts, and colors. I always liked being creative with my appearance, but doing so meant that I was a perpetual student of social rejection. I wasn’t the kind of girl being asked out on dates by my classmates, or being invited to parties with the cool kids. Instead, I was the girl that got bullied, humiliated (I was once asked out by a classmate as a joke) and marginalized.

But I was still fortunate enough to have a small group of friends who accepted me.

relationships. But college was a different world. The college social hierarchy was more ambiguous than it was in high school, and people generally cared less about ostracizing their peers for their fashion choices. They weren’t more accepting per se; they just didn’t care enough to make a big deal about it.

My friends and I were a diverse group. We were black, Asian, and white girls who bonded with each other on different levels. Some of us were introverted, others were more sociable, yet all of us were open-minded, and didn't care about people’s differences. I stood out—with another black girl—as the creative type of the group, but I made most of the daring fashion choices. I was the one pairing jeans with dresses and tie-dye skirts wrapped around my waist. I was also the one who pushed even more fashion boundaries on the weekends outside of school.

College represented a time of transition and change for me. I made more social connections and established a small group of friends. I also started to have more of a love life. But I still felt lonely because I was so different from most of the other students. I went to public school before college, they went to private school; I was a liberal, they were moderates and conservatives; I drifted towards Buddhism, they were firmly grounded in Christianity; my style was artistic and offbeat, and theirs was preppy or urban. The list goes on.

I remember going to the mall one Saturday with a friend. I decided to wear a white flower in my hair, a fitted top with a funky cut, black jeans with zippers down the front which I unzipped from the bottom hem to my thighs and beige wicker wedges. As we walked, three black teenagers passed by and stared at me with a look that read “that looks straight up crazy.” I remember how uncomfortable their gaze made me feel, but my friend told me not to pay them any attention. It was that kind of friendship that made life a little better and school a little easier to endure.

Fashion, once again, became the characteristic that most distinguished me from my peers. I still had a penchant for clothing with unique detailing, and often accessorized by styling flowers or scarves in my hair. Although I was not receiving the same cold responses or disapproving looks as I did in my early school years, I was now getting criticism for my style choices on a more personal level from one of my boyfriends. He had a love-hate relationship with my style, and would point out the many ways in which I defied proper fashion etiquette. I never felt like he fully accepted the way I dressed, but I knew that I couldn't abandon my creative sensibilities for something more conventional.

Although I embraced an “I am what I am” philosophy, I struggled with a more complicated paradox.

Ironically, my style became more conservative after I graduated and entered the publishing industry. I was now an adult, and that meant putting my experimentations with fashion behind me. Every now and then there were glimmers of my old ways in my style—especially in the summer or on weekends—but those moments were fleeting. Last year, I started freelancing at a fashion magazine. I kept seeing new ways to style hair, apply makeup, and wear clothing, and it sparked something within me. I wanted to play with my style again, just as I did when I was younger, yet now as an adult. I had to remind myself that just because I was no longer a teenager or a student in my early 20’s didn't mean I had to lose the spark in my style. It only needed to evolve.

I wanted to be accepted; yet I also wanted to not care. I knew I had friends who liked me for who I was, yet somehow I couldn't shake being rejected by so many of my peers just for being myself. It made me feel insecure and self-conscious, and I couldn't seem to get rid of those feelings no matter how hard I tried. I went off to college in 2002, and resolved to be more confident, fearless, and unapologetic—just like the person I truly wanted to be. But the ghosts of my past school experiences haunted me, telling me I’d never be good enough, black enough, cool enough, or pretty enough for anyone. I kept wondering if my shyness or my style would once again keep me from making friends or having romantic

About Andrea Graham: Andrea Graham is a freelance writer based out of New Jersey. She writes about race, gender, and popular culture.

COME OUT TO PL Y by Yewande Omotoso

“How big are your feet?” the short girl asked me. I couldn’t remember her name; she was in the other standard 5 class. There were two, A and B. I was in B. “Seven,” I said, and pretended not to notice when she and her friend sniggered. Pretending was something I perfected at the age of 12, when I arrived with my parents and two older brothers in South Africa in 1992. From 1992 to 1995, I mastered pretending and the years since (I am now 32 years old) have been spent learning to tell the truth again. The truth about myself, the things I like and dislike, who I am and where I come from. Even the simple things—like my shoe size. In standard 5, everything about me was either too big or too small. In the school changing room, while removing my school dress to put on my physical training uniform, I noticed (but pretended I didn’t) that I was being laughed at. It was the white vest that I was wearing in place of a bra. Not even a socalled “training bra,” because at 12, I was broomstick-thin and had nothing to train. Up until that point, I hadn’t thought that there was anything wrong with my vest or my breasts. I was just me. I was forming as I was forming, and that was that. Coming to South Africa was the opposite of blossoming. It was a coiling back into myself. A recoiling from what was reflected back at me by the children on the playground. There were white South African children, and other children who I learned were neither white nor black, but coloured. I didn’t understand “coloured.” I thought of it as another kind of recoiling—from being black. It was the year of the referendum where white South Africans voted on whether black people would be allowed to vote in upcoming elections. Golden Grove was one of several previously whites-only schools that had recently opened its doors to all. Seeing the trickle of black students scattered in the hall during assembly was like spotting a rare creature in the jungle. I didn’t look at them with relief, or with an expectation of friendship. I was wary—this was all uncharted territory far off from my home in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. It was a long way from running down the hill to buy icelollies with whomever had money and picking the fruit of the almond tree by using our slippers as catapults. It was a long way from a childhood where “making friends” was an anomaly. Friendships came easily in my real life in Ife, and to the girls who looked at me weird, I flashed my eyes and went to play with the boys.

Physical training in the Olympic-sized swimming pool haunted me. I dreaded the horrid swimming cap I had to wear and the state my hair would be in when I came out of the pool. It was a lonely predicament; everyone else’s hair slicked back on their skulls or stuck onto their foreheads when wet, yet mine did something quite different. As I walked down the passageway one day, I realised that there was a performance going on behind me; two girls were pointing their fingers at my hair that was obviously doing something it was not supposed to—sticking up in funny places, stiff as a wire. Their act was enjoyed by most of my classmates while one or two looked on with pity and quiet disapproval. It was too late to pretend I hadn’t noticed the mockery, but I pretended anyway. I spent the long hour lunch breaks in the classroom. I read through my notes, rewrote them. There were times when teachers would walk into the classroom during lunchtime and I would pretend I was fetching or putting something away and leave for the playground to avoid being pitied. Some days I braved the field and found a non-threatening group, usually a group of coloured girls, and sat on the edge of their circle. I sat quietly, pretended to listen, but mostly waited for the bell to ring so I could go back inside. Other days, I phoned my mother. She never asked why I was calling. We would talk about nothing important and after 10 minutes, when there was nothing else to warrant a continued conversation, we would say goodbye. In the manner of “like attracts like,” my only friend was Deborah, a second generation Portuguese misfit whom I saw others mocking for her extra weight, curly hair, and bad skin. Deborah and I broached a tentative alliance as if we understood two un-cools wouldn’t make things right. We found solace in the library and in an occasional chat in the hallway. Her tactic had been to occupy her lunches with library duty, scholar patrol training, and joining a team of seniors who organised the 7-to 8-year-olds during their lunch breaks. Toward the end of our last year of primary school Deborah admitted, in a rare moment of candour between us, that while most of the outgoing Golden Grove students were going to Grove and Westerford High School, she’d chosen the less popular Sans Souci. I think she wanted to remake herself. I’d grown up proudly myself, within a loving, warm family. Where did my sense of shame suddenly emerge from? Convinced my lips were too big, I folded them. We once had an art project to do self-portraits. In my drawing, my pretend face was full, my body could almost be mistaken for stocky, my hair collected atop my head in a mannerly bun—in a way it seldom was in real life. “Is that you?” my father asked, some disappointment in his voice. I don’t think I answered his question.

The day before my last day at Golden Grove, driven by some deep sense of propriety, I decided to bake a chocolate cake for my class. I made brown icing the colour of weak hot chocolate and applied it with little skill, but plenty of heart, onto the lopsided cake. We packed it into a cardboard box and I took it to school the next day. Only when I entered my classroom did it dawn on me that I had done a stupid thing. No one had asked me to bring cake. Where had this notion of mine come from? I shoved the fairly large box under my desk; I was horrified by the prospect that people would hate it or refuse to eat it. At the end of the day, I walked up to our teacher and showed him the cake. He took one look at it and suggested I take it back home.

Art, and Drama Society. I acted in the house play one year, and helped write and direct it the following year. My long hibernation was over, my camouflage became unnecessary. These days, although I still have a quick mechanism to hide myself like a log-fish in a stream, I am willing to be seen. To be noticed. Me and my bendy hair, long feet, and slender body with its curves and sensual dips. Me and the things that are mine. The things that are weird, distinct, and beautifully off. The stuff I came here with.

After our last day of class, and the hysteria of signing each others t-shirts and dresses was over, I never saw Deborah Santos again. Did Deborah’s plan work? Going to a school in which she hoped no one she knew would follow her? I joined my brother at Westerford where, for two years, I hid in toilets rather than join an assembly of 800 children. I don’t remember a lot of detail from these years. I know I thought I was ugly. I was tall and gangly, easily spotted in any class photo—the tallest head in the shot. After a childhood of wishing I had glasses because all the other members of my family did, I was finally awarded my very own pair of spectacles. In a moment of madness, I chose pink frames and regretted it for years; my classmates made fun of me. My hair remained unsatisfactory; I went to the hairdresser with my mother and my kinky hair was teased into submission with a blow dryer. It was insufficient for me, but my mother refused to allow me to use chemicals to straighten my hair.

Yewande, a trained architect, completed a masters in creative writing at the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel “Bomboy,” published in 2011 by Modjaji Books, was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Literary Awards and the MNet Film Award. It also won the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize. Other works include “Heroes” with online crime fiction magazine “Noir Nation” and “Two Old People” in the anthology “Speaking for the Generation: Contemporary Stories from Africa.” Yewande’s poetry is published in the Baobab Literary Journal. “The Rain” was shortlisted for the 2012 Sol Plaatjie European Union Poetry Awards.

About Yewande Omotoso: Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados, grew up in Nigeria, and currently lives in Johannesburg.

She was a 2013 Norman Mailer Fellow and selected as one of Mail and Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans.

“You’re too young,” she’d say, and I would sulk in response. In 1994, in my third year at Westerford, I applied to be a “special friend.” It was an offer of support to newcomers entering the school at the standard 8 level. The idea was to give each new student a fellow learner who would act as a chaperone. I’d devised that this was the easiest way to change my lot—take someone who had no choice but to accept my friendship. Noloyiso was introduced to me on an arranged day. She will forever hold the title of being my first real friend in South Africa. It had taken me three years to find one. Having gotten the hang of it, two more friends, Thembi and Anya, followed quickly. Friendship was knowing where to head when the lunch bell sounded, holding a space for me in assembly, and passing notes behind the teacher’s back. Something unfurled, and revealed itself. Something that had always wanted to be seen, and known, and heard but was too scared. Something that had remained intact through all the sadness and lonely minutes spent hiding behind toilet doors. Preserved, unharmed, and ready to play. In my last years at Westerford, I joined the Music,

I lived for “X-Men: The Animated Series” on Saturday mornings.

From Float ing to flying

I watched it in my bedroom, gazing at the screen in Rainbow Bright or Strawberry Shortcake PJ’s while tugging at Barbie’s hair with a comb. I was the girl who always wondered why Superman underwear never came in girl’s sizes. I wished I could be spunky like the X-Men’s Jubilee, or have glowing eyes and flowing hair like Storm. Something always captured me about these characters. They were villains, mutants, and freaks. My existence as a black girl felt the same way. I was seen as, and later felt, otherworldly in the flesh. I was living and breathing in Southern Virginia, but my spirit never really settled down to the constructed ideas of what it meant to be a black girl. As a result, I was always the odd one out. I just couldn’t keep up. They say black girls don’t swim, but I joined the swim team anyway. I was usually the only one in the pool whose hair puffed up at the sight of moisture. I constantly wiped dripping water off my face because the “Just For Me” in my hair burned as it slid into my eyes. I could run faster than the boys, bring home straight A’s, win a track and field award, and play Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on the piano all in one day. Yet, it seemed as though those powers were not supposed to be meant for me. The more I expanded myself—running faster, jumping higher, reaching further— the less recognizable I was. In superheroes, I found people who just accepted that they weren’t like everyone else. At eight years old, I secretly began to connect with comic books. I also started hiding them in case people thought they were in the wrong hands of a pigtailed, cocoa girl like me. I kept each comic tucked away, making sure the pages peeked just enough from underneath my books—sort of like a signal. Growing up as a tomboy always seemed like a covert operation to me: a double life of surrendering to my mom and her love for all things Southern lady-like. I wore an invisible cloak over all of my lace and pink in first grade to play soccer with the boys, trade baseball cards, or read comics. I even traced the drawings. I was completely enthralled.

by Shane’a Thomas

That same year I received a Barbie stencil tracing set for

my birthday. Barbie’s flat sketches of pinafores and heeled shoes quickly found their way back into the box. Instead, I began stealing my brother’s Marvel comics. I obsessed over the bright primary colors, and the sharp detailed lines and dots that described war, heroism, and justice within tiny boxes. Wonder Woman’s lasso created the perfect loop over her head with the flick of her wrist, and Gambit’s eyes pierced into you as his speech bubble drawled, “Mon ami,” in his smooth Louisiana accent. I once attempted to draw my own characters and adventures, but wasn’t fearless enough to extend my lines or create hair that flowed like the winds of Storm herself. I still had so much to learn. I had yet to acknowledge my own superpowers, and see past the “human” traits that limited me. Ironically, my love of animation flowed into my obsession with the Black Panthers. It was more than the guns and the persona that made The Black Panther Party for Self Defense unstoppable in my eyes. They didn’t even have to show their weapons to make a point—they just had to show up to save the day. They knew the line between fighting and being fierce. Their presence alone put fear into someone’s eyes. Instead of capes, they wore leather jackets. Instead of metal or a mask, Kangol hats protected their heads. Their words made them warriors. When reading more about them in undergrad, I would look down and see myself reflected in the pages of my history books. My silhouette matched that of Angela Davis—my Afro full and round just like hers. The Black Panthers made people remember who they were. Without question, they were proud to be themselves. It’s as if they took the ill-interpreted aggression society put on them and turned its crux into power, a power that I was constantly told, through life, that I wasn’t allowed to use, even if for survival. In the case of both superheroes and the Black Panthers, to question them was to question their existence and purpose on Earth. This eventually made me wonder about mine. Today, I have discovered that my superpower is to make space for people to be themselves; to be a living example that people can love and be loved without pain or persecution. Superheroes have integrated themselves into my life, and into the lives of the social work graduate students that I teach. Do you know how useful (and amusing) it is to present at conferences, opening with my favorite Spiderman line, “With great power comes great responsibility?” My high heels are usually paired with a slick blazer over a vintage

Superman shirt and slacks. In my clinical therapy work, not only do I relieve my young therapy clients’ anxiety when I wear my Wonder Woman shoes, I also pique a curiosity amongst my adult clients. My power expands its arms to colored girls in beat-up Converse’s and Kool-Aid dyed hair; to black men fighting for their right to see their children; and to mothers of color with bipolar disorder who just want to start over. My “ADHD” clients brighten their eyes when I use comics to teach that it’s easier to navigate and understand life when you break it down into smaller pieces, smaller boxes, smaller stories. My power can speak to souls, giving them the power and energy to realize their strength, self-worth, and purpose. My words build warriors, and their self-realization of strength is a form of armor. I had to get comfortable with the idea that I, too, can fly, even if others saw that I was doing it backwards or sideways. I have to continue to accept that my pride and my existence can cause people to fear my breath, but can also take theirs away. There’s no need to hide behind a cloak anymore. My leather jacket still stays, yet the close crop on my head is the only thing protecting me from evil. I don’t need much to weigh me down. I’m flying.

About Shane’a Thomas: Shane’a Thomas is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the Washington Metropolitan area, where her goal is to show all people that they have the right to love and be loved without pain or persecution. A proud alumna of Virginia Tech and Howard University, Shane’a currently does intensive office and home-based therapy work specializing in the area of life transitions, bereavement, depression, women’s issues, and various gender/sexual/alternative lifestyle identities. Above all, she is proudly living her dream as college professor, teaching for the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work’s Virtual Academic Center (VAC), shaping people not only as competent social workers, but as self-aware humans who are committed to the community. When she’s not fighting for everyone’s right to exist as they are in the world, Shane’a’s favorite modes of selfexpression include painting and writing for various blogs and anthologies.

who am I

by Whitney Greer

WHO AM I?

It’s the question we all ask ourselves. Black girls are no different. But… if you happen to be a quirky black girl, you find yourself face-to-face with this question constantly. Who you are can somewhat be defined by the things you like to do, right? I'd like to think so. Dating and learning and art and music… these are certainly a few of my favorite things. But what happens when what you like is at odds with what others think you should like? What happens when you’ve been defined as an odd, and therefore socially-doomed, person from the very start?

Learning “She sounds so retarded!” We were all students at a scholarship program at the University of Illinois at Urbana when I was about 16. At that point, I was accustomed to being made fun of. Other than being embarrassed, more than anything, I was angry that words like that still had such power over me. Of all the things that bothered me the most about the peculiar, journal-writing, straight A-getting, action moviewatching, alternative rock-listening, just plain old odddressing person that I was growing up, my voice probably bothered me most of all. In my mind, it sort of symbolized how unaccepted I was. Today I’m a writer and editor living in New York, but I was born and raised on Chicago’s North Side. I’m not sure if being from the North Side of Chicago had anything to do with my personality. You see Chicago, like many other places, has its “sides.” The North Side can be relatively diverse in some areas, but it’s mostly known for its boutiques, restaurants, bars, and Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. Therefore, the North Side is about 80 percent white. The South Side is known for Comisky Park—home of the Chicago White Sox—and about 80 percent of the black population. Sure, there are all sorts of people all over the city, but honestly, after you clear about 60th Street, if you see someone white walking around, you know they’re probably lost. Even I avoided the area until my twenties when I attended the University of Chicago, and the majority of my family moved to the South Side. Ever since that “retarded” comment, I was afraid to be surrounded by more of the same opinion.

Dating “I could never date a black girl. There are just so many negative stereotypes about them that I could never get over it.” —An insanely unattractive young white man, who’d be lucky to have any girl, said to his other, equally unattractive friends, right behind my back. More truth telling: I don’t exclusively date black men. Where I grew up, there was always a huge mix of people at home, at school, and at work, and interracial dating and marriage were pretty common. Did my upbringing influence my dating choices? Or, do I choose people who make me feel more comfortable about my interests? I’m not sure how to answer the question. Thinking back, the first boy to show interest in me, at 6 or 7 years old, was a little blonde boy who happened to be my next-door neighbor and classmate. He gave me a pretty little heart-shaped necklace for my 7th birthday. We liked the same strawberry Bubble Yum, McDonald’s fries, and the book “Charlotte’s Web.” And that was all that mattered. My dating choices have gotten me into trouble. Once, while on a date at a restaurant with a friend-of-a-friendof-a-friend, a man, after noticing the two of us eating at a table that happened to be near the window, proceeded to walk into the restaurant and tell me I should be ashamed of myself.

“Are you going to start talking black?” —A white boyfriend said to me about a month into our relationship. (We broke up soon after.) This particular boyfriend justified his comment by explaining that in high school, he had a teacher who spoke “proper” with her students, but when around her friends, talked like “a normal black person.” When we inevitably broke up, I don’t think he was very disappointed. I think he was bummed that I wasn’t more of the black woman he felt I should be.

listening to a certain type of music, and felt he had the right to question whether that “right” extended to me.

Shopping “Yeah, we could tell from the way you dress that you probably only date white boys.” —A couple of black male students about a week after I arrived at the U of I campus in Urbana, IL. I’ve never been the most fashionable person. Burned in my memory still, is a yellow tropical print blazer I bought in junior high that I was sure would single-handedly earn me countless friends. It didn’t.

Music “Did you just say you actually like the Pet Shop Boys? Girl, please, you’d be the only black girl at a Pet Shop Boys concert.”

Another truth: I do very much censure what I listen to when I’m around particular people, out of the ever-present fear of being hit with that damn music-defining shtick. I wonder what it’d feel like to be 100 percent secure listening to whatever I want to listen to, whenever I want to listen to it.

“Yes!!!” —I couldn’t help but think to myself… …when, at a friend’s party at their home in the South Loop, someone had gotten a hold of my iPod and, scrolling through it, realized that Ms. Doesn’t-Talk-Or-Act-Like-ASista actually had some Wu Tang in her collection. No, I’m not looking for musical acceptance, but yes, it still feels nice to not be made fun of.

SO WHO AM I? I’M ME.

—Said with a look of shock by a Starbucks barista. Yep, you heard that right. Pet. Shop. Boys. And you know what? I. Don’t. Care. Next to fashion, another area of my self-definition that I cannot bend on is music. There are certain tunes that my ears say YES! to and others that they say Oh Hell No! to.

“Staaaaaay, stay awaaaaaaaayyy!” —A black friend of a friend sang in his car one night, right along with Kurt Cobain, as he gave me a ride home. Seriously. This guy was SO very ecstatic to be playing this song. All over his face was the fact that he’d finally met someone black who wouldn’t laugh at him for listening to Nirvana.

“Umm… exactly why do you know who Perfect Circle is?” —Asked by a former boss, a young white guy who happened to be playing a song by the band in his office.

“Listen to that voice,” one of my grad school professors said, years after that “retarded” comment, while I was reading a news report in the recording bay of the Journalism department. After so many years of ridicule, it still was a little bit of a surprise to hear appreciation—the acknowledgement that my voice was actually of value. As I finished my news report, I smiled to myself as I remembered that girl’s words. I was finally able to recognize them as judgmental and—epiphany time—having absolutely nothing to do with me. Who am I? I’m a woman who likes what she likes, and couldn’t stop even if she tried.

About Whitney Greer: Whitney Greer is an executive editor for InteractiveOne in New York. Born and raised in Chicago, she has been a journalist and editor for over twelve years. Whitney's background includes television, radio, magazine, and digital media, and she has contributed to various publications and online media sites, including MSN, NBC, TheGrio, Huffington Post, Essence, and MTV.

This is an example of someone who had the “right” to be

G.M. Jones

I can mark the stages of my youth, not by incremental inches etched onto a wall with a pencil, but by the notches spread across the radio dial. The Western offspring of African music served my life’s soundtrack growing up. I was nursed by soul, cradled to the rhythms of reggae, reared by classic pop and R&B, and disciplined by hip-hop. Yet, the moment I veered beyond the borders of my culture’s most popular musical styles was the moment my tastes began to take shape.

92 3 FM According to my mother’s recollections, Prince’s dazzling storybook album, “Purple Rain,” had me dancing at just six months old. The glitter, the guitars, and the fearless flamboyance captured on that epic record captivated my little ears. It was, quite possibly, an early sign of the sonic diversions that were to come. As a girl, the popular hits of the late ‘80s and ‘90s governed my two-step and hairbrush singing sessions. I was obsessed with Paula Abdul, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston. Mom kept Anita Baker, Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, and Peter Tosh in rotation. My big brothers recited LL Cool J, Eric B & Rakim, and EPMD lyrics like the pledge of allegiance. Throughout elementary and middle school, my radio dial faithfully remained at Baltimore City’s urban station, 92.3 FM, also known as 92Q Jams. I rode to school tuned in to the morning show broadcast faithfully. I made my own mixtape collection by popping in blank cassettes and waiting patiently for the Top 5 countdown so I could press Record. I memorized the lyrics to a hodgepodge of hit records—forever immortalizing a mix of love ballads, party anthems, and testosterone-driven tunes. But something shifted once I crossed over into my teen years. I was homeschooled for two years beginning in the seventh grade, and subsequently spent an enormous amount of time alone. This newfound solitude gave me ample room to branch out and explore my own creative path for the first time in my adolescence. Because I was at home studying all day, I wasn’t easily exposed to the latest trends. I didn't have the access, or even the pressure, to try to keep up with the cool kids or squeeze myself into the “in” crowd. I was now a freethinking individual.

Of course, I didn’t realize this at the time. At 13 years old, I embodied insecurity—always covering up, hiding, staying quiet, and dreaming of one day looking like the models in the teen catalogues and magazines that arrived in my mailbox each month. Music, it seemed, was the only thing that made me feel safe, free, comfortable, and accepted. I could play a song from start to finish, and fantasize about being somewhere else—and even someone else—entirely. Music was my refuge. In the middle of this self-exploration stage, I soon grew tired of the same songs rotating on the urban radio station. My daydreams called for a new soundtrack. I wanted to discover and experience something else, and naturally gravitated toward a sound that connected with my soul, yet was vastly different from my previous definition of what music could be. And with a simple turn of the radio dial, in walked Gwen Stefani.

97 9 FM Baltimore’s 98 Rock station changed my life. A couple years earlier, in 1995, No Doubt’s single, “Spiderwebs,” from their second album, “Tragic Kingdom,” was on heavy rotation on MTV. The new-era ska sound was just gaining headway on the Top 40 charts, and No Doubt kicked open the door for me, introducing a vibe and energy I’d never experienced. The screaming. The unexpected vocal acrobatics. The familiar Caribbean baselines. I pulled on my headphones, and got sucked in immediately. Watching bandleader Gwen Stefani kick and pounce across stages with her unusual voice, backed by the warmth of the ska-based horns, reeled me in. I was mesmerized when I saw the video for "Spiderwebs" for the first time. I remember my older brother telling me he heard on the news that she'd broken her foot while performing her now trademark theatrics on tour. That tiny bit of information lit me up. Here was a woman who didn't just stand on stage looking pretty for the cameras. She took charge, led the band, broke bones, and had millions of fans yelling her name. I admired her audacity and let my rock music adorations flourish.

This forbidden dip into the world beyond 92Q Jams opened up a new arsenal of sounds for me. I found a connection with guitar riffs and heavy vocals, and went even deeper into the unknown, falling in love with Green Day, Metallica, Rammstein, and Fiona Apple. I stole my brother’s Rage Against the Machine, Oasis, and Queen albums. I slipped all of my music into a blue Casio CD player, and when I was finished, stuffed the records back into a fuzzy, cobalt blue case that I carried with me everywhere. I favored brooding sing-along tunes accented by heavy emotion and enchanting delivery. I could sit for hours, replaying songs again and again, reciting lyrics, imagining myself singing onstage, and even dreaming up my own music video concepts for my favorite tracks. Here, immersed in music, any self-hate that I experienced got lost in the melodies. I was a loner at my predominately white, all-girls Catholic school. I was quiet, shy, and didn’t totally fit in with the various cliques. I felt like the lone weirdo—a rolling stone among the athletes, cheerleaders, bad girls, and scholars. In the cafeteria, I ate lunch at the “black table,” but also bonded with the dweeby theater-kids. I watched old black and white movies, read voraciously about the Black Power Movement, was once called a “school nerd” by a white classmate, and looked forward to getting the hell out of high school, so that I could escape to college and eventually travel the world. Within this awkward teenage social divide, a penchant for storytelling, and Bob Dylan, emerged.

105 7 FM and 93 1 FM On my 16th birthday, my friend Laura gave me a Bob Dylan Greatest Hits album, which I still own and play to this day. Around this time, I’d started digging into rock’s roots, rummaging through blues and classic rock thanks, in part, to Baltimore’s now-defunct 105.7 FM, home of “Good Times and Great Oldies.” My self-driven studies on the civil rights movements and youth rebellion in the late ‘60s encouraged a fascination with my parents’ generation. At that time, I was convinced that all quality art was crafted pre-1970, and mourned the fact that I wasn’t alive to witness the energy of that time, and contribute to its spark. I heard Bob Dylan’s vivid folk narratives on politics and romance, and took notes on the craft of writing. “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” are still two of

my favorite songs. Then came Sam Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, Martha and the Vandellas, and Janis Joplin. I’d never known that people like Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and John Lee Hooker paved the way for rock’s current iterations. What an incredible surprise is was to learn that the music I was so drawn to was actually a black art form. With this knowledge, I no longer felt that I needed to hide my music interests, and keep my adoration for the guitar’s piercing hiss all to myself. My people had originated rock n’ roll. This music was for me. The simple melodies and artful composition of older music felt like home. Here, real life was captured on wax—raw, with no gimmicks. The artists’ poems were stripped down to the basics and performed with the utmost sincerity and class. A newfound appreciation for this music sparked and caught fire within me. Shortly after delving into the barebones style of rock and soul, I began turning the dial to the country station, and dissected yet another form of music that valued storytelling at its core. On 93.1 FM Baltimore’s country Station I fell hard for the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain. Faith Hill, JoDee Messina, and even Brad Paisley had hits that I knew by heart. I found a brief curiosity in country music, mimicking the twang and drifting off to a lifestyle that I had limited knowledge of. Country, like the blues, had beautiful harmonies and emotional transparency. The narratives were honest and the instruments—the violin, the lap steel guitar, and the banjo (a native African instrument)—gave the sounds texture. In 10th grade, I remember receiving an invitation to a birthday party thrown by one of the popular girls in school. Surprised that I was even asked to attend, I went (and stood out, of course), and witnessed everyone belting out Garth Brooks’ “I Got Friends In Low Places” at the end of the party—a now famous ballad. I went home that night and made it my mission to learn that song. I didn’t want to be left out of the action. Country music then became part of my music tapestry.

Today FM? These days, I’ve turned the radio off, and have settled into my own tastes. Looking back, I can see that my journey toward womanhood was always backed by the style of music that found its way into my earphones at the time. Whether I was wearing out my Brandi and Xscape tapes, belting the lyrics

to The Dixie Chicks’ “Ready to Run,” or even sashaying across the room to The Buena Vista Social Club, I learned about myself, and other cultures, through the art of sound and rhythm. My music explorations as a teenager, though deeply private, gave me the liberty to create a definition of myself, allowing my experience as the black girl with the odd interests to grow roots. I’m still inspired by a range of genres, and still bang my head to wicked guitar solos. Today, the musical climate is much more flexible and accepting. When I was younger, I was afraid of being ridiculed for what I listened to, and had very few people I could share my interests with. I take comfort now, knowing that a little girl like me has the freedom to be as unusual as she chooses to be. The girl of today can fly up and down the radio dial fearlessly. She can shape and express her identity as she’d like, and move freely to the strum of her own guitar.

About G.M. Jones: G.M. Jones is a writer, editor, content creator, and sometime filmmaker based wherever her laptop is plugged in. This story gave her an opportunity to dust off and revive her creative writing skills. When she isn’t hustling words in the freelance struggle, she’s probably floating somewhere in cyberspace.

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