Going Bald with St Baldrick's!

I love my hair. It’s thick, long, gorgeous, and never lets me down. Even when I was surviving on coffee and cigarettes and stress my hair was thick, long, and gorgeous. Even after three kids and losing half of it, it’s still thick, long and gorgeous. That said, it’s just hair: I have the choice to cut it or never cut it again, whenever I want. My hair is just part of me, and this year I will use it as a statement and a tool to raise funds for childhood cancer research.

On March 11th I will be heading over to de Vere’s Irish Pub to get my head shaved with the St Baldrick’s Foundation, and I am asking for your help to raise funds for this wonderful cause. We all have been touched by the ripple effect of cancer in our lives, whether you are or have been personally affected by the disease, or have a loved one who is or was. We all know how important cancer research is. I have three close friends who survived different childhood cancers, and know countless other friends and family members who have had cancer themselves or have been affected by it.

If you are like me you probably just assumed that all cancer research funding was equally divided based on need. Unfortunately this is not true at all. Approximately 1 in 285 children will be diagnosed with cancer in the US before the age of 20, with the average age being 6 years old. However, only 4% of federal cancer funding is dedicated to pediatric cancer research. And while it is true that more adults are diagnosed with cancer every year, this doesn’t mean that funding for children should be neglected. On the contrary, our children are the next generation, and we should all be working towards creating a better, and safer world for them.

St Baldrick’s Foundation works towards closing this funding gap, and I hope to add my drop into the ocean by raising funds to help. Cesar, my partner, who usually rocks a shaved head will also be participating on the day, and has promised not to shave his head until then (it’s going to drive him nuts, he loves keeping his hair as short as possible!).

It would make me so happy if everyone I know could chip in with a few dollars! Every little counts, and every little bit will go towards the funding of childhood cancer research. And I promise to share photos of my shaved head on March 11th! I’m not on Facebook or Instagram anymore, but you can still find me here and on Twitter, and via email at jadeannahughes@gmail.com. And please feel free to share my fundraising link below to anyone you think would be interested!

THANK YOU!!!

My fundraising page (this is just a starting goal, I hope to raise much more!).

Cesar’s fundraising page

Our team page, Jade and Cesar

Fog

That rare feeling of knowing you are in one place, but simultaneously being pummeled with the feeling of being in another. Fog like the fog we felt that Monday a few weeks ago is England: thick, dense, gloomy, damp. And beautiful. I am grateful to have been blessed with a day of my England just by stepping out of my door in California.

A Couple of Nights in Dahab

Dahab was like a breath of fresh salty sea air. There was the before Dahab which included searching, walking, finding, and staying safe in Cairo, Aswan, and Luxor. There was also the right after Dahab in Hatzeva, the one hot amazing shower that I will remember for the rest of my life, and the coffee that tasted like heaven. But in between those moments was Dahab, right there, perfectly timed at the end of our trip. For all of the non-planning we had done before setting off for Egypt, leaving Dahab until last was the best decision we could have made. We had gone from Evron to Taba to Cairo, Cairo to Aswan, Aswan to Luxor, and finally Luxor to Dahab without much more information than a few handy hostel addresses and less than $200 on each of us. It was early 2004 and our group consisted of me, somewhat seasoned traveler, Andrea from Colombia, also somewhat seasoned traveler, like me used to discomfort and being poor, and Kirsty, very unseasoned traveler, from a wealthy family in South Africa (complete with ingrained racism and fear of the “other” which hadn’t been too noticeable until we stepped off the bus in Cairo). I don’t know what we were exactly thinking when we set off but it definitely wasn’t about the actual safety of the country or the places we would be staying in (less money better option was our mantra). That said the only place where I actually felt uncomfortable was Luxor as we kept feeling like someone was following us. We relied on our instincts and obviously our good luck, and also on the relative safety of Egypt at the time.

This all took place in early 2004, so 15 years ago, and many things may have changed since then. I do hope Dahab hasn’t changed too much though…

We got on the bus to Dahab from Luxor Bus Station at 5pm, with fresh, warm, buttery rolls, and cheese for the journey, assuming we would get some good sleep on the bus and wake up refreshed in the morning in Dahab. The trip did not go as planned at all. First of all there were so many checkpoints along the way, it literally felt as if the bus stopped every few minutes, and we had to show our tickets and papers frequently. I gather that this is even worse now from some online forums, so if you are planning on making the trip by bus be prepared for it to take hours longer than the service states. I’m actually not sure if the bus route even exists anymore. We were told that it would take 13-15 or so hours, it actually took about 21.

When we got on the bus we found 4 empty seats, two on one side of the aisle, two on the other, so we thought that we were all set for the trip. An hour or so in to the journey and the man in front of us moved into the empty seat next to me with his baby (to give his wife more sleeping room), and proceeded to talk to me in Arabic even though I didn’t understand, and try to hand me the baby. It was kind of cute, and I think that if we had all been able to understand each other better it would have been a lot easier. I was tired though, and really wanted to sleep my way through the journey so as not to think about having to use the (really) stinky bus toilet at some point. Suddenly the bus made a very strange sound, and then a weird mechanical type of smell proceeded to fill the air. We stopped at the side of the road while the driver went to check out the issue. We then continued along to Hurghada where we stopped at a garage where someone checked the bus out. We all sighed in relief at the thought of non-stinky toilets, but one look at the coffee stop by the garage’s restrooms and we braved the bus loos, covering our faces with a bandana. Off we went again, ready to settle in for the night, driving north up by the Red Sea, when the bus broke down for good. In the middle of freezing nowhere, desert all around apart from the water to our right. I went out for a cigarette, but it was so cold I rushed it and went back into the bus and tried to sleep. About an hour later another bus turned up, we all piled on and finally made our way up over the Suez Canal and towards Dahab.

We arrived at Dahab bus station around 11am and took a quick service bus to the sea front. We walked around a bit looking for somewhere to stay, and chose the Venus Camp where we shared a thatched hut and communal bathroom for about 6 Egyptian pounds each. The scenery from Dahab is absolutely amazing: glistening Red Sea, mountains in the distance across the sea, sand, camels and striking blue sky. We were there in January but the weather was warm enough to walk around in a t-shirt in the daytime. We didn’t brave the water though which I slightly regret now.

Our hotel was literally steps from the beach, and the main beach area, which is full of restaurants and comfortable Bedouin type seating areas, cushions on the floor and low tables with blankets and shades overhead. A plate of rice, soup, salad and bread only put us back 5 Egyptian pounds, and a bowl of Kushary even less. I bought a new top and pants (I was literally travelling with the bare minimum that I had been washing and drying as much as possible), and rushed to have what I thought would be a lovely, refreshing shower after all of those hours in the bus. But that was not to be… The showers in the camp used salt water, a mere trickle of lukewarm saltwater, my soap wouldn’t lather and I ended up feeling less clean when I got out of the shower than I had before I got in! It was an excuse to just not bother for the rest of our time there.

We decided we would forgo the sunrise trip to Mount Sinai, something that I regret now, but I still remember how exhausted we were, and how tired of buses and trains we had become. All we really wanted was to relax for a few days before making our way back up north to Evron, and I also know that none of us had much money left anyway. So that’s how we ended our tour of Egypt with less than $200 trip: relaxing by the Red Sea, walking around, looking at the beautiful blue blue of the water against the red browns of desert mountains. I will always miss the beauty of the Sinai and Israeli desert landscape, the land that looks so barren from a distance but when you look closely there is so much beauty in every step. Lunar rocks, colored sand, looming hills, and the appearance of millions of stars in the sky at night, every night. And the food… I miss the food. Not all of our food experiences in Egypt were a success (the snot-like consistency of what was meant to be tahini in a falafel sandwich in Aswan comes to mind), but most of the time we were lucky. It’s not always easy to travel on a tight budget as a vegetarian or a vegan, and sometimes it means having to make do with bread and cheese or bread and hummus (which is fine by me). Luckily Egypt is one of those places where you can find quite a bit of vegetarian-friendly street food, so I never went hungry. Dahab gave us omelets, falafel, aubergine spreads, salads, soups, and the one winter drink I still crave: sachlab. My endeavors to find sachlab led us to some interesting and important finds in both Egypt and Israel (jumping in a sherut to Akko without having any idea where I was actually heading was one).

Venus Camp with the bamboo huts, Quo Vadis Napoleon restaurant, with the fairy lights and the cushioned floor area on the beach and the deals we made for breakfast and dinners: places that most likely no longer exist today, but definitely still have a place in my mind. We were so exhausted after Taba-Cairo, Cairo-Aswan, Aswan-Luxor, and then Luxor-Dahab, that all we could do was walk slowly, breathe, and relax by the sea, even though the wind was Egyptian-winter cold. Restaurants let us sit in their beach area hang-outs with just a drink and a snack because they wanted to attract more business during the less touristy winter days, and we welcomed the fact that we didn’t actually have to do anything. After spending the evening listening to music and enjoying cake and ice cream by the sea, we made our way back to the camp to sleep, ready for the 2.5 hour bus journey back up to Taba the next morning, and a re-entry into Israel that would lead us all back up north to the kibbutz.

 ———

I know that there are advisories on travelling to the Sinai area due to military operations and terrorism, however it was also not considered safe either in early 2004, at the peak of the Second Intifada. It appears that currently most attacks are on Egyptian security forces, as well as churches and flights, so road travel is probably best, and the usual safe travel cautions apply, as with anywhere. In my opinion everywhere is unsafe in some shape or form, and obviously some places are more dangerous than others, but everyone should research an area in full rather than just base a choice on a travel advisory. Dahab is such a gorgeous place to stay, inexpensive, and you can easily get to Israel, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia if you wanted to. Just remember that if you are planning to travel to Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and/or Yemen after Israel it’s important to not have a stamp that gives the idea that you may have been in Israel. Israeli officials usually provide entry visas and stamps on a separate piece of paper, but you will need to ask Jordanian and Egyptian officials to stamp a loose piece of paper if you are crossing one of the land border crossings between the countries. It’s pretty obvious to anyone where you have been if you have an Egyptian stamp from Taba in your passport…

I will work on Cairo, Aswan, and Luxor next, grateful for the fact that I wrote so diligently in my journal during my travels. I want to go back, older, wiser, and with the intention on taking better photos and without the feeling of needing to rush through everything. I would love to revisit Aswan, sit up high on the banks over the Nile and relax.

For more travel stories and memories click below:

Travel and Places

Hope and Action (Hope vs. Action?)

NYC, London, Sacramento, over the past decade. So many more where these came from, so many more that are still waiting to be taken.

“It appears to be the same rotten old wheel that keeps this country churning:

Oppression, hatred, cruelty, and fear.

We are hanging in there, tiptoeing around, then suddenly jumping full force

With our Doc Martens into the middle of it.

It’s either hide in the shadows and hope for the best or be the change you want to be for your children.

It won’t happen for us, but we can do it for the next generations.

If we don’t maintain some kind of semblance of hope there wouldn’t be any point in living anymore.

So hope pushes us forward, but reality makes it clear that Hope alone won’t save the day.

And if we don’t fight then we are no more than cowards really.

This world is so much bigger than a bar, a city, a country.

This world is so much bigger than the individual.”

(Excerpt from a work in progress with a working name of “Belonging”. It may or may not see the day).

Empathy, Hope, Unity, Acceptance, and Self-Education

My writing is very disjointed at the moment, fragments jotted down here and there, slowly becoming a page, two, three, and then more. Each fragment is being built into another piece until they come together into something much bigger over time. Over the next few months there will be “essays” composed of fragments, all stemming from a project I started this time last year that took on a world of it’s own. My views, my observations, my memories. For me, for you, for no one in particular, for everyone. Today’s piece is a disjointed essay on how narrow-minded we are in general.

I started writing this piece earlier in December, while pondering on the lack of empathy, and the lack of memory in the general population around me. Maybe this is a result of having born witness to events from afar (through a TV or computer screen) but never having had to actually live through them? The latter has a huge effect on how a population views life in general I think, but it doesn’t excuse the apathy and disinterest in others’ well being. It’s easy to imagine what someone else, another group of people, or a population in general is going through, but can we really understand it if we only witness through a small, media-driven lens? When a lack of interest in seeking out more information is coupled to a lack of basic empathy, the ground beneath us starts to erode, revealing the filth of buried secrets. Then comes the sudden need to throw blankets over everything before we have to admit that nothing is the way we have made it seem for so long. 2018 should have been a year of great change, but it really just feels like a game of same old, same old.

I was reading through some Bush Sr. related coverage for work when I suddenly realized that Gorbachev was still alive. I don’t know why it surprised me, but it did. It certainly made me recognize, amongst all this sudden praise for a president who so many hated back then, that the world was such a different place when I was a kid than it is now. I was born in 1978, and was very aware of what was going on in the world from a very young age.  My family always listened to the news on the radio, and I was always encouraged to read anything I wanted to, to explore information, and to ask questions. There was also the fact that my stepfather came from a family of Polish immigrants, who had been displaced by Stalin at the beginning of WW2, and had no home to go back to at the end of the war. We talked, read about, and listened to, a lot of history, both recorded, and orally through individuals who had lived it.

I vividly remember being at the tail end of the Cold War, of the wall (Berlin Wall of course) and of Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, John Major, and of course, Mikhaïl Gorbachev. We were stuck between the US and the USSR, always wondering what was next. The 80’s still have a bleak feeling to them in my head. Cold, gray, threatening. My sister still shivers when she remembers our cousin telling us that there was a button that could be pressed by Reagan or Thatcher and once they did missiles would destroy the world, and we would be gone, burnt to a crisp. (Obviously we realized after a while that it wasn’t as simple as that, but yes, nuclear war was a threat).

These words still have deep meaning to me: Glasnost, Solidarnosc, the Iron Curtain, the Wall, the Cold War. We studied things like the Bay of Pigs and the Cuba missile crisis in depth, assuming that we had actually made some steps towards a better, more positive world. Do I see the world differently now because I know more, or because it just felt more simpler back then, the good and the bad, separated by a river?

Do you remember Ceaușescu? His name was such a household name he was always on the news and I constantly wondered why he appeared to be so evil. I lived in peaceful, plentiful (as opposed to the East) countries, but I was always intrigued about what went on behind the Iron Curtain. When I was very young I imagined a real curtain made of iron, descending with a crash like the gate of a storefront. I often wondered about my counterparts just a few countries away, children just like me growing up, going to school, falling in and out of love. What was it like to grow up under Communism? Was it the evil we were supposed to think it was? Years later we had a visiting professor from Berkeley at my French University, whose specialty was teaching US foreign policy from 1945. His lessons were designed to shock, to have us look at the USSR, even at Stalin in a different light, but we were confused by his tactics. We already knew how to think for ourselves, we didn’t need someone to tell us what to think. Still, he aimed to teach us that Stalin’s Communism wasn’t as bad as we were taught. I suppose none of his family members died in the gulags or in the pogroms…

My stepfather still had family members in Poland, and others in the Soviet Union; communication was only available via letters that could take forever, opened and read by censors (with random black lines through content), or scheduled phone calls that might or might not go through. We didn’t have a home phone when we lived in The Netherlands in 1988, a rarity, and we would use the pay phone down the street if we needed to call someone. My stepfather’s family members did the same, although their phones were usually the actual only phones in the area, and it was obvious all calls were listened to. I remember waiting and waiting for one of his cousins and their son to arrive from the USSR (now Belarus). The process to obtain visas and travel permits and back and forth was drawn out for months, and the day they finally were supposed to arrive came and went without a sign of them. And then suddenly there they were. We smiled a lot, as we did not speak Russian, and they did not speak English or Dutch.

There is an art to communicating when you don’t speak a common language, and I learnt it a long time ago. Most likely from moving to different countries and being thrown in the deep end so to speak: we had to immerse ourselves into everyday life, school, and friends immediately. You learn to communicate through gestures, looks, smiles. I suppose it’s one of the main reasons why my other half and I transcended regular communication even though we didn’t speak each other’s language very well (at all). Most people couldn’t understand it, but to me language has never been a border.

I also remember other family members arriving, these ones from Poland, and assuming we would be giving them a truck full of jeans and electronics to take back with them. They soon discovered that our roads were not paved in gold, and nothing was handed to us on a plate, but the abundance of everything was still overwhelming. When bread, milk, chocolate and eggs are available whenever you need them you don’t really wonder what it’s like to have to line up for basic necessities, ration book in hand, and hope that when you make it to the front of the queue there will still be something left to buy.

(My recollections of our trips to Poland before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall can be found here).

I fully believe we are too comfortable in our abundance, we often take it for granted. It drives me mad to see apathy in the face of possible change, where people watch a government chipping away at their rights and they are too comfortable in their abundance and apathy to feel frightened. Freedom is never a given, and there is always someone who wants to regulate it, take a larger part of the pie for themselves. Can you imagine the state breathing down your back, observing your every move? Having to skip through twenty hoops to get a visa to visit Canada or Mexico, or any other country for that matter? Can you imagine not seeing your family for years, speaking sporadically on the phone, not being able to get through when an emergency strikes, waiting in limbo for hours to hear some (good) news? It’s bloody hard, I can tell you. We take our guaranteed ease of communication and freedom for granted. We take too many things for granted, too much of the individual and not enough of the collective.

I think we all believe in stereotypes of some sort, but as individuals and as a society in general; we have to do the hard work of destroying them. How many times do you hear Africa referred to as one country rather than a massive continent composed of many countries, climates, people, customs, cultures, languages, and governments? How many times do you hear the US referred to as “America” when America is actually a continent comprised of many countries, cultures, people, languages, governments, etc.? What do you think of when I say “USSR”? When the current president spouts out stereotype after stereotype what do you do to erase the harm that it causes? When we refer to a group of people as a stereotype, and generalize them, we are just a step away from dehumanizing them. By generalizing and stereotyping people we are actually saying that they are “not like us”, which immediately has the pejorative effect of “us” being “better, easier, normal”. “Them” is not “us”. It’s a constant learning process, this push to “uneducate” ourselves from so much of the crap that we have been taught, to use our eyes, ears, and minds differently, with acceptance and empathy rather than fear and unfounded misgivings. Obviously we will make mistakes, most likely awful ones at times, but learning is what we must do in order to evolve into a better human race in general.

We don’t have much time left. We have learnt from history, especially very recent history, that walls, persecution, isolation, internment, and censorship are never a solution to any kind of issue we think we may have. We are not protecting ourselves when we shut out, censor and destroy the “other”. Today’s cages and walls, a death here a death there, are tomorrow’s failure to anticipate discrimination, mass murder and hell, and the following day’s frantic whitewashing of the crimes we committed the day before.

We can choose to say no more. This doesn’t mean waiting for the next election to save you, because by then it will be too late. We have to say no more right now.

Two children recently died in US Border Patrol custody, their names were Jakelin Caal Maquin and Felipe Alonzo-Gomez.

There is a conservative effort that at least 85,000 children have died of starvation in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia is hiring Sudanese child soldiers to fight for them in Yemen.

A 7 year old child named Jazmine Barnes was shot and killed while in her car with her mother in a completely senseless and horrific drive-by shooting. This will never be normal, so why did it happen?

Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered three months ago and the US has not put any pressure on Saudi Arabia for real answers. Are we slowly forgetting about this?

And people in the US are so afraid of the “other” that they have started their own fund to build the wall. It has reached over $18 million dollars… Racist bigots and their money, always going towards something completely dumb and unhelpful to the country they say they love.

And so on.

No More.

2018 in Books

According to Goodreads I read 106 books this year, which sounds about normal for me, always a book or two on the go, always a book I’m itching to discuss with someone, anyone. I also started my own personal reading challenge this year, where I have to read at least one book from each African country. This challenge is moving into 2019 as I started it more than halfway through 2018, and there are many countries in Africa, and many, many choices of literature and authors to choose from.

2018 has been a real mix of books: new, old, recent, and important. There have also been some duds here and there and others that I just couldn’t get into, and a few library books that I kept renewing until I finally realized I wouldn’t be reading them. I don’t consider reading to be just for entertainment, it is also part of my overall continuous education, and some books are not read for personal enjoyment. But not everything is for everyone, and there were definitely some of those on my list this year. There were also some stunning pieces of work, books that I will be revisiting again and again.

Reviews for all books that I have read in 2018 can be found here. This post will focus only on my favorite books released in 2018 and why you and everyone else should read them. For each of these books I can remember exactly when I read them, exactly what my mindset was at the time and exactly why they touched my heart and mind. If you haven’t read them I certainly recommend you do, and if you have I would love to hear your own thoughts! Here’s to a very happy new year full of laughs, of love and of great new reads to share!

(Books are in the order I read them, no other meaning to the order as there is no way I could ever pick out a number 1! Full reviews are hyperlinked. I also haven’t read anyone else’s best of list yet, but I am going to have a look how many of my personal faves appear on other lists after posting this!).

A Perilous Path - Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law by Sherrilyn Ifill; Loretta Lynch; Bryan Stevenson; Anthony C. Thompson

Based on a roundtable discussion that took place in early 2017 this book is full of topics we really need to talk about, and even more importantly the work we need to do in order to make proper change. It’s also a great introduction to the enormous amount of work that Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson, and Anthony C. Thompson have done and continue to do.

Educated by Tara Westover

A beautifully written memoir that reads like a novel, Tara Westover recounts her extraordinary life growing up “off the grid” in a world that many of us can’t really imagine actually exists in current day USA, and how she manages to get herself an education that ultimately leads her to Cambridge University in England.

In A Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers - Bernice Yeung

A deep look into the fight against sexual harassment and violence in areas that have historically never been as well regulated as other areas: farmworkers, domestic workers, and janitorial assistants. These are also areas that employ a high percentage of immigrants, and the book provides a real in-depth look into exploitation, harassment, and violence in the workplace, as well as the continuous battles to create real change in these areas of work.

The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti - Blondy Baruti

Blondy Baruti is a real inspiration: from playing basketball barefoot on the streets if the Democratic Republic of the Congo, surviving civil war, violence, and starvation, to receiving a basketball scholarship in the US, and then starring in Hollywood movies, he lives to fight for a better day. The book is so well-written you feel like you are sitting by his side and listening to his voice. It was an unputdownable read for me!

The Sun Does Shine - Anthony Ray Hinton

Can you imagine spending 30 years on Death Row for a crime you didn’t commit? Anthony Ray Hinton did just that. The Sun Does Shine is a beautifully written memoir of a wrongful conviction, of forgiveness, and of strength. It is also, in my opinion, a very important view of why the death penalty should not exist.

Brothers of the Gun - Marwan Hisham

Marwan Hisham provides us with a real look into revolution, (civil) war, ISIS occupation, and into Syria in general. Can you imagine living in Raqqa under occupation? Neither can I, but this memoir is a must read and shines a good light on the ongoing conflict that we all have a part in perpetuating.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads - Clemantine Wamariya

A profoundly marking story of genocide, survival, strength, and honesty: Clemantine was only 6 when she was forced to crawl out of her grandparents’ home and run for her life, and she kept on running out of Rwanda, in and out of refugee camps, and finally to the US where she made a life for herself despite everything she went through. I want everyone to read this book.

All The Women In My Family Sing – edited by Deborah Santana

An anthology that raises the voices of women, of mostly underrepresented women, and makes them heard. An absolutely necessary read in my opinion, and one that I keep going back to. I also love the work that Nothing But The Truth Publishing is doing for women of color writers, editors, and illustrators.

The Map of Salt and Stars - Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

One of the most beautifully written books I have ever read… The story of leaving a home for another, of borders, of maps, seas, and stars, and of family. Very, very current, but also timeless.

A Better Place - Pati Navalta Poblete

Gun violence, the never-ending evil of US society, which seems to touch everyone, no matter who they are or where they are from. Pati Navalta Poblete’s memoir is a heartbreaking read of a mother’s loss, and how she turns her grief into a way to help the community.

America is Not the Heart - Elaine Castillo

Such a deep novel with so many layers, encompassing themes such as immigration, family, Filipino history and culture, home, and also romantic relationships between women. Everything is dealt with in such a realistic fashion that you have no problem falling into the wonderfully flawed and new (to me) world of Elaine Castillo. I learnt so much about the Philippines and about Filipino culture, and realized that there is a giant hole in terms of accessible Filipino literature in this country.

The Myth of Perpetual Summer - Susan Crandall

This novel was quite a revelation to me for personal reasons, and I absolutely sped through it because the story had me hanging on by a thread all the way through. Set mainly in a small town in Mississippi in the 60’s and 70’s, it is the story of coming of age in a very unconventional family, amidst secrets, mental illness, and gossip. It is wonderfully written and raises many conversation starters on mental illness awareness that are still very much needed today.

American Hate - Arjun Singh Sethi

A profound collection of testimonials from people residing in the US who have been affected by prejudice, racism, hate in the build-up to the 2016 elections, and directly afterwards. We have to tell these stories, and we have to remind everyone that by remaining silent we are complicit in the perpetuation of white supremacy and hatred of “the other”.

Fruit of the Drunken Tree - Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Colombia in the late 80’s early 90’s, the divide between affluence and abject poverty, and a young girl’s story of learning about life through a climate of war, violence, and greed. This novel is beautifully written, and the perspective is quite original as well as heartbreaking.

Ohio - Stephen Markley

An epic novel that is extremely depressing, gray, sickening, and even completely hopeless at times. This one is not for everyone, and you may struggle a bit at first, but once you get into it, the story won’t let you go. The worst (best?) part of this story is that it could be absolutely, 100% true. Who knows, maybe it is?

The Rain Watcher - Tatiana de Rosnay

Family secrets, a mystery that is slowly unraveled, love, a rising Seine that threatens to flood most of Paris… My favorite type of novel, written by one of my favorite contemporary authors. There are some beautiful descriptions of Paris in the dreariness of continuous rain, and there is a profound sadness that emanates from the narrative that makes you want to look at your own life and possibly rectify some wrongs.

Disturbed In Their Nests - Alephonsion Deng and Judy A. Bernstein

You don’t have to have read They Poured Fire on Us From The Sky (written by Alephonsion Deng, Benson Deng, and Benjamin Ajak) to appreciate this memoir, but I do suggest everyone reads both anyway. The stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan are absolutely heartbreaking and an important read for everyone, especially in these times when our countries are restricting immigration and banning refugees and people seeking asylum. I wish people would remember that so many people don’t leave their home countries because they want to, most leave because they have no other choice.

Heart Berries - Terese Marie Mailhot

There is a real reason behind all of the rave reviews of this book: it’s a must read in so many ways. I haven’t read anything like it before, but at the same time so much of it felt wildly familiar. The marks intergenerational trauma leaves on us are deep and painful, something that Terese Marie Mailhot knows all too well. But Heart Berries is so much more than just that, so, so much more.

Heavy - Kiese Laymon

Heavy is truth. Heavy is Kiese Laymon’s life, truthfully, no sugarcoating and no hiding behind anything. It is also bravery, honesty, and beauty, as well as a profound insight into US society and culture.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape - Sohaila Abdulali

This is an honest, accessible, well-written, and extremely important read where Sohaila Abdulali talks about rape and the effects of rape on the individual and on society as a whole in a no-holds-barred manner. It’s refreshing, full of significant facts and details, and a great way to lay the topic open for everyone to talk about, so that we can really make proper changes.

Wunderland - Jennifer Cody Epstein

WW2 historical fiction is my consistent go-to read, but I have been pretty disappointed with more recent finds. Until I read Wunderland, which basically blew all of those disappointments out of the window. This is the story of two best friends in Berlin in the 1930’s, growing up under Hitler’s tightening powerful grip, and the legacy that they leave behind them for the next generations. It’s a powerful and very thought-provoking read.

This Is Cuba - David Ariosto

I’ve always been fascinated with Cuba and Cuban culture, so this was a must read on my list. I’m so glad I read it, it reads like a travelogue and a memoir, and contains many important historical and current facts that are woven into the narrative. David Ariosto is a brilliant writer and you feel like you discover Cuba with him, while learning a huge amount about the country too.

Some other noteworthy reads this year: kisiskâciwan - Indigenous Voices from Where the River Flows Swiftly, The Come in All Colors - Malcolm Hansen, Sold on a Monday - Kristina McMorris, Enemies in Love - Alexis Clark, A Dream Called Home - Reyna Grande,  The Lost Family - Jenna Blum.

You Don't Have To See Me

I walked through Times Square wearing a real British red, a slim pillar box of a woman, standing out amongst the dim greys and browns of winter. Or so I thought until one person after another jostled me, tourists pushing through me towards the bright lights, red not enough to shine a light on my existence. You don’t have to see me, but why can’t you acknowledge my existence? If a stranger walks through me and you don’t even notice, how can I even expect you to be the beacon I always assumed you were? I ask too much, I know.

First it was Kurt. No wait, go back. First it was my father, dangling into dust with Joy Division playing in the background. Then it was him, the one who cloaked himself with the role of father, and moved his family around like chess pieces on a board, simultaneously playing you against one another and most often against yourself. A few weeks after his departure Kurt blasted himself into oblivion, leaving me clutching my cassette tapes and crying into my diary, abandoned. Alone. Invisible. Then the boy I was in love with, but had never spoken to, moved away, and my diary talks of broken hearts and depression, of sadness and also of longing. Longing to be seen, growing steadily up, a flower in need of light, gasping for air, breaking free from the Girl Guide knots in the ropes that were containing her.

Freedom is an ocean that swells unexpectedly, dragging you off to places that nourish you, but sometimes also break you. It’s a learning curve, freedom is.

Walking against the crowds in Times Square, invisible in my red coat, brought me back to that year, 1994, when everything was either amazing, or the end of the world. I had yet to learn to temper my emotions, let them trickle down the slide rather than cascade down the mountain, avalanche or ball of fire. 1994 was a year of turning heels and turning backs, and of wandering down the soft slopes at the base of the mountain, wishing I could just fall right off the face of the earth. I hid beneath ripped jean, long hair, and oversized sweaters and music that tempered my wild thoughts. I still listen to that same music, the lead singers long gone into voids of drugs and depression and events they didn’t manage to control, but the music still speaks to me. I would walk home from school, shaking off the dank grimness of the monotonous and constant taxing demands on my brain, my Walkman carrying songs that spoke to me alone, that made me stand out and stand up. Music gave me visibility; music gave me purpose. I could be me, all of me, without all of the boxes and the cloaks and the expectations.

I took steps to solidify my existence amongst others, choosing to weave in and out of the path ahead, rather than plod along, unseen and unheard.

But there is always something that suddenly makes me even more conscious of the space I take up... So I pack myself into a smaller box, hide in the shadows, and revel in this ease of traveling through time in low visibility. There is something safe about walking through people, knowing they don’t see you, passing you by without even an acknowledgement of your presence. This invisibility serves me well, I don’t leave a visible trace, but you know I have stopped by. I think... Do you? Have I left an invisible mark on your life? Do you remember my face? I remember yours. I always remember yours.

I used to sit in class and look ahead stoically, willing the teacher to pass me by. It worked most of the time, my will forcing my body to become invisible, folding myself into a tiny space where no one would notice me, where no spotlight reached. I walk through the streets and wonder why I am always the one who has to move out of the way, but I never stand my ground, so used to moving, creating space between myself and the other, space being a protective cover, space meaning I don’t have to interact. I battle with this need for space, for cover, and the same need to be heard and seen: and as neither ever wins I hide behind my words. This, my voice; these, my words. They are strong and powerful like me, but often indirect, metaphor, for what the reality is. Words have longevity. You may forget my face in an instant, and forget how my fingers felt on you face, my voice in the wind now, but my words will stay with you.

I’m still 1994, but I’m also 2018, still hovering between the space and the spotlight, finding a place that is me. Do we ever find our real place? Are we meant to have a place? I do not accept my place amongst you, I do not accept the role, the cloak, or even the mold that you play upon my being. For that I will always stand strong and teach the same to my children, for that I will never back down.

I’m not transparent: I’m hued. Each flicker sends ripples of effervescent sparks your way, each shake a wave of golden, yellow, warm orange rays. One turn may block the light, another may be a beacon. I vow to not hide behind myself anymore, and I pledge to stand taller, to not move out of the way when I’m on my path. You don’t have to see me, but you must acknowledge my presence, and the presence of all of us around you, all of us so used to fitting into smaller boxes, hiding behind the light, moving out of your path. We all belong, we all have light to share.

I walk through the city gardens, eyes straight ahead, pushing my children, scanning the surroundings for invisible dangers. I tell my eldest to run with the butterflies, to enjoy the freedom that comes with space and youth, and I whisper to myself to hold my head high.

No more boxes for me, and only space for my offspring: space to run, and space to hold hands with others. We all hold our heads high, searching the sunlight rather than the cracks in the pavement.

When the Sun is Orange

When the Sun is Orange

It’s so smoky; the world is orange and grey.

A town burned down 80 miles away, to the ground;

We put masks to our faces, my chest heavy,

Involuntarily smoking now;

I see the particles embedding themselves in my children’s lungs:

They cough, vomit, cry, cough again. But we,

Lucky ones,

We still have our homes, our belongings, our lives.

Our city is standing, shrouded in the smoke from

The fire that burned a town to the ground.

The orange sun is strange, dusk at noon,

Challenging the smoke with its warmth: surprising.

Autumn hues, wrong, set the balance off kilter,

And the smoke continues to swirl, stuck, an apparition

Of our future perhaps, but real, this is no image.

Our ground is literally burning away beneath our feet

And we still deny, deny, deny.

Orange sun, grey smoke, burning breaths,

Search for bones and remains: where is the rain?

We lack appreciation for the droplets of water,

Praising blue skies and wispy clouds.

But when the rain refuses to come and blue turns to smoke

And smoke turns to death, all we do is

Close our eyes and yearn for change.

——————

We are on Day 8 of being engulfed in wildfire smoke from the Camp Fire which burned down Paradise, a small town about 80 miles north of us, and is now considered to be the most deadly California wildfire on record. The air quality levels peaked over 343 today, harzardous, and our normally blue skies are grey, orange, hazy, and thick. The fire is still burning, and the wind is still blowing all of the smoke to our sity, where is sits, stagnant: the smell and the feel of the world’s biggest bonfire at our doorstep.

Can't Stop Now...

I’ve been spending more time on Twitter recently, keeping up on midterm election news, finding out who the person who spat on me is (I told you in my last post I would never forget his face), and just in general looking for some hope in the pile of stink that this country keeps digging up and throwing all over itself.

First of all, an update on the spitter: apparently he is just another Nazi boy who thinks it’s OK to harass people and spew hatred everywhere. I saw that look I have encountered in others in his eyes when he walked past, so I wasn’t that surprised really…  Despite what the city tries to tell us, Sacramento is full of racist cops, Neo Nazis who are consistently called “Conservatives” by the press (who then always go on to vilify Antifa and anyone who appears to protest against Nazis), and people who pretend to be all “peace and love” until you accidentally step on their lawn, at which point they will call the racist cops to come and flush you out. In any case, let me just say that it wasn’t the police who helped me find the spitter’s identity, I actually found out via Twitter, and I am grateful to the groups of people who are actually really looking out for the community. They are also the ones who made me aware of the Nazi, sorry I mean “Conservative” rally this weekend at the Capitol, so I didn’t take the kids there as I would normally do.

I also came across a tweet written by a man who had been brought up in the UK by one British parent and one Dutch parent, and who had suffered so much abuse growing up because his peers didn’t consider him “British” enough. He detailed some really horrid bullying and more, so much so that he felt as an adult that part of his identity was missing, and that he was unable to find it again. It reminded me of something that had happened to my sister and me during our first year or so living in The Netherlands. We had moved away from England, away from our extended family that we had always lived very close to, and were getting used to living in another country where everything was different, including the language. We learnt to speak Dutch very fast, but the first year was a lot of trial and error, and a lot of learning by ourselves. I was 10 when we moved there, and my sister 8, and we had also been through some very recent trauma. We would often be sent out on our bikes to the local supermarket by our stepfather who was home with our baby brother and who spoke less Dutch than we did.

There were two boys who would follow us on their bikes, trying to knock us off, yelling things at us, basically being mean kids. They couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than me, and they just acted like real bullies. The type you are always on the lookout for once they have harassed you once or twice. One day they cornered us down by the canal where the bike path navigated its way on the embankment, above the water but slightly below the main road. One of the kids spat on us, and they called us names, pushing us around, mentioning the word “taal”. In Dutch the word “taal” means language, but it is also the name of the subject of Dutch language at school. At that time the only way I had seen it used was in terms of it being a school subject so I had no idea what they were talking about. It was only later that it dawned on me that they were bullying us because we didn’t speak the same language as them. Kids get these things from their parents. The only way an 11 or 12 year old would have been pushed to bully two younger girls because they didn’t speak the same language would have been because they heard their parents or siblings talk about other people in a derogative manner.

In any case, my sister and I ended up having enough of it one day when they actually followed us home, and we raced into the house as fast as we could and our stepfather came out and yelled at them in English. They never came near us again.

All my sister remembers of those guys is that they kept spitting and spitting at us, huge wads of spit. I remember the mix of fear and incomprehension: what had I done to deserve this? Thing is, when I think about it now I know that this was one experience of xenophobia in my life; there have been others but I am able to pinpoint them to a time and/or a place for the most part. I have not had to live day in day out with being treated like a lesser being because of my skin color. But having experienced it like that at such a young age helped my resolve to fight all the harder against injustice, racism, bigotry, and white supremacism in general.  

These past few years have in general been terrifyingly triggering in many aspects for me. It’s hard to feel 100% when every day you wonder what current event is going to unearth a ton of old shit that you spent so long trying to bury far away in the ground…

The election results were better than I hoped for (not as good as my wildest dreams, but still, better than what I thought would happen). It has been wonderful to see so many women elected, so many immigrants of children of immigrants, people of color, LGBTQIA people, representing all of us, not just a small percentage of white USA. That is huge, and I think a great overview of how hard people have been working to create a better world for everyone. I just worry so much that all of the people who have done the bare minimum these past few years (i.e. vote) will assume they don’t need to do anything else because we are OK again. We are NOT OK. And a large amount of the population will tell you that they have never been OK. My kids will never be OK in this country the way it is now. We can protect them as much as we can but it’s impossible to avoid the hate that is so rampant around us.

One tweet I read last week that has stuck with me said “Voting doesn’t get rid of white supremacy”. Another tweet (I’m sorry, I can’t remember the name of the person who compiled it) listed every single person in office who was openly a white supremacist and who had ties to white supremacy, and that list was scary. Scary because these people are considered normal, these people were elected to supposedly look after this country in the way the people want them to look after it. Scary because these people don’t represent a majority, but for some reason they still manage to get a majority. So, no, voting doesn’t get rid of white supremacy, (and somehow it seems to allow white supremacists to be legitimatized over and over again), but it does however help to make a difference, as we can see from Tuesday’s elections. The only way to get rid of white supremacy is to fight it from the core, and those protecting that rotten core (a large amount of white men and women) are currently hanging on strong. I don’t understand how a person can pertain to have certain values and standards, and then go on to vote for people like Steve King or Ted Cruz, or back people like Brett Kavanaugh. Is it fear of standing on their own two feet and looking at the world the way it really is rather than the one they have always lived it? The easy way out? Just not giving a shit? Reluctance to relinquish power? Greed? All of the above and more? I don’t understand it. But white women (and that includes myself): we need to step it up and get these ridiculous percentages of other white women to stop voting for people who will never have their backs. Honestly, how could 50% of white women have voted for that disgusting Ted Cruz?!

This means that we can’t stop fighting, not today, not tomorrow, not even when the first woman becomes president. The core is so very deep, and it resides under all of us. It’s OK to feel uncomfortable now and again… Many of us live with that feeling. These past two years have been a huge wake up call to so many people, an eye opener to what we have let slide, what we endure, what we sit on and hide. Now is the time to step it up and really go for it. This means denouncing the spitter who thinks he got away with degrading a woman, it means voting in every election you can vote in, it means standing up whenever you see injustice or prejudice or violence against another person, and it means unearthing your own prejudices and getting rid of them too.

I’m already dreading the next restrictions that are heading our way, the next immigration hammer to fall this week. More gaslighting, lies, hatred, and doctored videos coming from the White House. We aren’t OK. But we can continue to fight to be OK.

No More Minimizing (This Is NOT Normal)

Some random asshole spat on me today.

I wanted to shake people and yell about how violating it felt, this man walking towards me, and spitting in my direction, making me feel so helpless. Then I started to think that I was probably overreacting. In the grand scheme of the world , a man, coming in the opposite direction, who deliberately walked as close as possible to me when he passed and then, also deliberately, spat at me, is not the end of the world. It’s disgusting and made me feel like a worthless piece of shit, but he technically didn’t hurt me, so I shouldn’t really complain, should I? I mean, I should, and I am, but at that moment I just felt so small. Just seconds before I had been walking home with so much confidence, my two eldest at school, and a day full of activities with my baby and partner laid out in front of me. And then suddenly I was shaking, tears welling up in my eyes, and that cold fear rising in my stomach, the one I recognize from my childhood. I hesitated, wanting to yell and show my anger, but apart from that person there was no one around, and I was afraid he would turn around and punch me in the face. I had caught a glance of his eyes in the second that he passed me, and his look was enough to tell me he would have no qualms punching me in the face.

I should have trusted my instincts when I saw him approach half a block away. I know I should always trust my instincts. They don’t usually fail me, but I sometimes fail them.

Years ago, I must have been about 20 or 21, I was walking to a friend’s home, just a few minutes down the street from mine. I still remember the scene vividly, playing out in slow motion in front of me. I could see a man approaching from the opposite direction, amongst other people, and for some reason my gut told me something was off. He was walking fast, and the moment he was about to pass me by he punched me in the face, so hard that my head snapped back and smashed into the lamppost that was right behind me. I turned around, stunned, as he ran off, turning round and cackling at me. He obviously had some kind of mental illness, not that I am qualified to name what, or maybe he was just an asshole with violent impulses, who knows. But I ended up with a black eye and a bump on the back of my head. No one even stopped to help me, and I just stumbled to my friend’s house and burst into tears trying to explain what had just happened to me on a busy street in broad daylight. She asked me if I wanted to go and report it but by that time I was just overwhelmed and for some reason had already minimized the assault, and stupidly never did report it. I don’t know why I minimize things like that. Fear of being in the way? Fear of being seen as stupid, silly for making a mountain out of a molehill? Fear of actually having to explain how I felt and how this person made me feel?

I don’t trust many people. I may come across as kind and caring, and that is absolutely genuine. I may share stories about my life with you, listen to your stories, and you can trust me with your secrets. But unless you are one of very few I don’t trust you. It’s not personal, my trust was violated when I was very young and when these types of things happen they reinforce why I don’t trust. And they happen too frequently. We walk the streets on the defensive, a natural cloak that we don every time we leave the house. Our eyes constantly look, judge for danger levels, and move on to the next, crossing the street or turning back whenever our instincts through up a flag. It can’t be just me can it? I’m sure we all do it. I doubt I’m the only woman walking these streets who has been punched in the face and spat on by random men. I’m sure for every woman who reports being spat on or harassed there are dozens who just go home and live with it in silence.

And trust me, I am not scared of much. I had no issues closing at bar on the Lower East Side in NYC by myself at 4am, or jumping over the bar to drag drunk idiots out by myself. But it’s been 20 years and I haven’t forgotten the face of the man who punched me. I won’t forget spitting guy’s face either. The imprint is marked permanently into my memory, which is quite insane if you think about it, as I literally only saw their faces for a few seconds. I’ve been through a lot worse too, which makes it all the more strange to me why these type of incidents still stand out so strong in my mind. Maybe because they are just so random? Difficult to categorize as assault?

I keep imagining if the kids had been in the stroller and he had spat on them. What if the spit had actually landed in my face where he had directed it? Does this person go around assaulting women on his daily walk? Does he live in my neighborhood and is he just one other thing I now have to be worried about on my often rollercoaster-like school runs and grocery shops? Does he actually live in my building?!

As is the case for many women I have been verbally abused, harassed, assaulted, and just treated like excrement more times than I can even count or remember. We minimalize it and internalize it because it is so normalized in our society that we feel guilty even talking about it. But we must. Yes, I feel completely humiliated by the fact that a man spat on me and I just stood there shaking, but if I don’t talk about it I will make it into something less than it was. I shouldn’t have to walk around being worried that someone is going to spit on me! No one should.

(I posted about this on Nextdoor and forwarded the information on to the police department. If it happens to someone else and they report it too hopefully they will apprehend the man and make sure he doesn’t do it again. But for me it is just another thing to be on the lookout for when I go out by myself with the kids, on top of everything else).