At the risk of losing some of my readership, the next in the ' 100 list':
17. I've been to the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (and Israel). Met Palestinians, been in refugee camps, seen Israeli soldiers and settlers, eaten pizza in Tel Aviv, had my suitcase searched.
18. My most notable ex - the one it really hurt to lose - is a Palestinian writer living in Beirut. A secular Muslim, he's an expert on Western philosphers like Hegel and Wittgenstein. We're still in touch from time to time.
19. My Buddy is of partly Jewish descent. Brought up by his beloved Chinese-Jewish grandmother, he went to Catholic schools but still feels more at home in a synagogue than in a church.
20. I've been laughed at for being white. I know how horrible it feels to be the butt of jibes about your skin colour. Kids used to tell me they could see the blood in my head. "Tell them it proves you're alive," said my father, kindly. It didn't help. Only sunshine helped and that came years later.
21. I didn't 'get' this thing about colour when I was a kid. Tried unsuccessfully to figure out why it was a problem that the Pakistanis coming into our town had dark brown skin. And once, I asked a black girl who had the same name as me if she liked her skin colour. "Of course I do," she said indignantly. That settled it for me.
22. My two nephews are mother-tongue Cantonese Chinese. My only brother lives in Hong Kong.
23. I'd like to be a party animal. Someone outrageously outgoing, a daredevil, all-caution-to-the-wind type of person. I often think I'm quite boring. (I'm probably quite often right on that.)
3 comments:
I can look at number 17 and say that I have experienced everything you listed there. I am olive skinned, so no one has ever suggested that they can see the blood in my head.
But during Summers when I really tan they have asked me if I am mixed.
I grew up with a friend who is Chinese and Jewish and whose family speaks Yiddish.
And I have been the life of the party. It is a role that was quite fun, but one I gave up after my undergraduate life.
Strangely enough many of my friends began their drinking exploits during graduate school. Some of the friends they made in graduate school thought that I was kind of dull and boring too.
The colour thing's strange isn't it. Whites want to be brown but if you're born with darker skin you still don't win.
When I was younger I was interested in being blonde. It was really just curiousity, because I am far too dark for it to ever look natural.
But I don't really mind my skin color, I don't know any different and it hasn't ever been a problem.
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