IMOW - I will call my children mestiza

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I will call my children mestiza
Kumarini Silva

Sri Lanka

GALLERY

CONVERSATION

He can carry a card and get minority scholarships
I tell him we need the money

He points to his blond hair and blue eyes and laughs
No one will believe him
So he will be white and privileged
Even though he is neither
I will call my children mestiza
Their mother is brown
Under the heading “their mother is brown”
A privileged, unmarked body
No color, no gender, no race, no religion
The queen was the queen of the entire family but me

I hold my head up with pride
Generations of old Sinhalese blood and Portuguese
colonists and artists and scholars run through the body
that is now brown and third world
Underprivileged and colored
Even though I am neither
I will call my children mestiza
Because they will be called mixed, biracial, multiracial,
racial, racial, racial

I could call them sudda, which we now think is affectionate
Sinhalese for whitey, but fifty years ago we spat
it out onto the tarred roads the British built for us
I could call them “buck and tan” like my uncle does to
anyone who is “half and half” after the dark brown and
light brown oxford shoes he had as a child
I will call my children mestiza because their white father

and their brown mother don’t believe in categories.
See Full Story »

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