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Familial Racism

“Over the next few years, Mercy would cut my hair off many times, as if trying to teach me something about who I was, who I was supposed to be: my grandmother was the first person to ever call me nigger.” (Diaz, pg 51) 

From the start of her story, Jaquira Diaz has brought us all along her beginning childhood life in Puerto Rico. She touches on her childhood adventures and her family troubles. From the violence that would creep into her life and her own family issues. Diaz’s father has been a very present person in her story, the first story she shared was of her and her father at catholic church for a funeral of her father’s hero. She constantly references how similar she is and looks to her father. Saying “I was just like Papi, with his wide nose, with dark eyes, tight curls, skin that browned easily after a little bit of sun.”(Diaz, pg 18) She always felt very similar to her father and how he behaved. This explains how hurt and troubled she was with her father’s infidelity, stealing his favorite book and never letting him know that she had it, “I would lay my head on my pillow and feel nothing but the sharp sting of my father’s betrayal.”(Diaz, pg 37) 

Her grandmother Mercy was something that Diaz did not connect with, probably being that she was racist and colorist. Her grandmother constantly made racist remarks about Diaz’s family because her father was black with black features and Mercy outwardly disliked that. Diaz remembers “Our white grandmother, Mercy, hated that my hair was a tangle of dry and frizzy curls like my father’s. Bad hair, she called it.”(Diaz, pg 49) Her white grandmother ended up constantly cutting her hair short into ugly hairstyles then blaming the look on the fact that it was curly, kinky hair. To have a grandmother that blatantly did not like a part of you since you were young must have been horrible and traumatizing that she kept cutting her hair. To the point where Diaz was being bullied in school, people constantly asked her “Why do you look like a boy?” (Diaz, pg 51) I hope that as we continue the book someone stands up to or stops Mercy because that is just cruel. 


Díaz Jaquira. (2019). Ordinary girls: A memoir. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Having Someone There

While reading the first few pages of Ordinary Girls, I was already captivated by Jaquira Diaz’s story. But what caught me was the quote, “At first it felt like being interrogated, but after a while, I was so happy to have a grownup listening to me talk about myself, I let it all out. (Diaz 2019, pg 27.)” I felt like I was able to relate to that in a way because while growing up, there was no one to talk to, not even my family and when someone was there to listen to me, it felt relaxing and just telling them everything. Jaquira as a child was able to tell someone she never knew about her problems and to have someone listen to her was very comforting.   

Jaquira as a child had experienced many things that a child shouldn’t have experienced. From her stories of her parents fighting to her being able to feel comfortable with someone that she never knew was a little improper. She had to go to someone else to tell her problems to, and even though she loved her father very much, he wasn’t around much for her. I am similar to her in some ways, even though my dad wasn’t around much, he was still my favorite parent because on days he would have off, he would hang out with me and teach me random things that were very interesting.

Class 17

We’re going to work on replies to blog posts today. The handout we’ll be using includes all the posts that were up by this morning. If any more come in, it’d be great to have folks comment on them as well.

In class, we’ll work in big groups focused on your books. We’ll look at passages from the first section of the books you’ve read, and start thinking about the kinds of issues that are emerging.

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Some of the passages that we looked at focused on the grandmothers (Diaz 51, Talusan 24) and the way the offer care or don’t. Other people in caretaking roles, like Laymon’s mother, grandmother, and Renata (24), also came up.

Among the topics we discussed were

  • the beauty standard and how it’s shaped by race and racism and colonization;
  • the impact of such standards on individuals, even within affected communities (ie: colorism; one student’s comment about hair shaping their relationship to a racial identity in ways that were hard)
  • the coping mechanisms of people in dysfunctional systems, including when to “draw a line,” and the role of social science in understanding that

For Tuesday, read the next section — pages are on the Chalkboard Doc and the syllabus. As you read, think about the stages in life these writers are going through. Are they becoming more independent? What kinds of choices do they have and what do they decide to do? What larger social forces do we see at play in these pages? What connections can we make to earlier parts of the book? To other texts?

Blog Post 1 – Novel

When I first started reading the first few pages of Heavy, I noticed that he mentioned several times how he wanted to talk about lies. However, that wasn’t the case. Kiese Laymon delivered us an accurate story of his life from what he has experienced. He provided us with only truth by mentioning all the negative events he had to face when he told himself that all he wanted to write were lies.

 In the prologue, Laymon witnesses a man beating up a woman and him and his mom were trying to stop him. Furthermore, in the first chapter we read about his mom threatening him with the belt. I believe that sharing these negative events in his life was a way for Laymon to express his truthfulness in his writings. This book is a way to express black culture and give us insight of what really goes on in their lives since many people don’t really understand what it’s like to be black. His style of writing is more natural than professional. He wrote the book based on how he talks.  

The Importance of a Grandmother

Something I found really interesting was the different dynamics Diaz had with her grandmothers. She related completely with her Black grandmother and felt she was her safe place, whereas she never felt good enough for her White grandmother. I can relate to this in a way, because growing up I did have different dynamics with each of my grandmothers, and funnily enough one is Taino and the other isn’t. I found that going back and forth between stories was good at showing the differences in dynamic. With Abuela, Diaz loved cooking with her, spending time with her, using her house as refuge. With Mercy, there was judgment, verbal abuse, and passive unacceptance.

I love how Abuela accepts and embraces her roots, which is something that not all Puerto Ricans do, as Mercy continuously demonstrates. The obvious racism that Mercy has towards Papi’s side of the family creates confusion and unnecessary emotions in young Jaquira. This is something that is very important in a child’s upbringing and can have a bug impact on their mental health in the future, which Diaz alludes to multiple times. Not being accepted, especially by a member of the family, can lead to future problems. Abuela calling her “mi negrita” endearingly versus Mercy cutting off her “pelo malo” shows the stark contrast between the two grandmothers’ perspectives on their heritage.

Díaz, J. (2019). Ordinary girls: a memoir. First edition. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Fairest: Point of the Story

“Except: I was no longer a son, no longer a man. I became more aware of this as groups of gay men, mostly aging or aged, circulated around me” – (Fairest, Meredith Talusan Page 14)

When Meredith states this in her memoir, it reminded me of the research I did about her beforehand. She said that in her book, she wanted to reveal all her obstacles in life and not just about her transition from being a man to a woman. This phrase proved that she did just that. She went straight to the point in the prologue, it didn’t take the whole book for the reader to find out about her transition. In other words, I can tell that the memoir as a whole will not be just focused on this type of transition, but in others as well.

Going forward into the reading, she starts speaking about the importance of beauty in everyone. Even how it affects the “gayness,” race, and femininity in a person. Before reading the book, based on the research we did, I already knew this was going to be one of her main points in the memoir. I just didn’t know how exactly she’d introduce the connection between beauty and being transgender. After reading this quote, it became clear to me as to how Talusan would write out her memoir. Not only would her book focus on becoming trans, but also on her past, and the obstacles she had to encounter as someone who didn’t accept themselves and basically had to lie to themselves.

BuzzFeed Hires Trans Writer And Activist Meredith Talusan | HuffPost Latest News

Heavy:Part 1

Blog Post 1

In the reading of Part 1 titled “Boy Man” the author Keise Laymon begins writing about about the lies he was supposed to write, but changed his mind mid way and erased everything before. Laymon describes the truth of the black lives that are often meant to be kept forgotten such as the oppression, the violence, and overall their way of life. However the abuse that affects him the most is the one caused by his mother, to which he writes this memoir to. 

The abuse begins when he is very young and exposed to violence. For instance at the beginning, Laymon shares a memory of a time when he and his mom were playing with some rackets, when suddenly they saw woman getting beat up by a man. He beats her in the street across from where he and his mom were. His mother begins yelling at the man and this is when they took off. After this Laymon shares that he and his mom began to pray right then and there. He described the amount of fear and rage he felt at that moment, and kneeling down to pray during that time brought uneasiness.

Heavy: A deeply personal memoir

In the first few pages of Heavy, I immediately noticed that this memoir is deeply personal and touches the reader’s heart. Laymon uses daily day-to-day language form in simple sentences. He writes in a way that addresses his mother as his first intended audience. Through this way of writing, it is as if readers are listening in to what Laymon has to say to his mother, his closest friend, and everything in the entire world. 

Due to the fact that Laymon’s father does not seem to be present in his life, Laymon is deeply close to his mother and sees her as his closest companion. Laymon and his mother are almost like friends as exemplified through their actions such as going to the casino behind the grandmother’s back and playing tennis (Laymon, p.3-4). Despite the close relationship Laymon has with his mother, his mother is not without flaws. Laymon’s mother deeply cares about Laymon by protecting him from white people. She tells him to avoid contractions when speaking and disapproves of his relationship with a white girl we know later in the book. These things that his mother does to protect stem from the fact that she deeply cares about him. However, they can be damaging to their relationship as well. Hence, Laymon decides to write the truth instead of a “lie.” (Laymon, p.1)  Even though it is hard and Laymon wanted to write about shallow topics, he is still determined to talk about the hard truth. 

Laymon, Kiese. (2018). Heavy. New York, NY: Scribner

The Dangers of a Child’s Love

And while my parents yelled at each other and my mother threw the rotating table fan across the room and threatened to leave, I would lay my head on my pillow and feel nothing but the sharp sting of my father’s betrayal.

(Diaz, 2019, P. 51)

In the first section of our reading for Ordinary Girls, Diaz touches on a number of very heavy topics in her early life. Like many children, one parent is favorited over the other – in the case of Diaz, this is her father. Her father was like an idol to her, and she did everything to try and be like him and saw him almost like a hero. While her mother was unstable and ready to lash out, and her brother bullied her and belittled her because of her looks and gender, Diaz’s father stuck out as a source of comfort for Diaz. Diaz spent many nights with him while he read to her and she would always try and read his books so that he could understand his secrets and be more like him. However, as she grew older, the idolization began to fail. She found her father selling drugs in the plaza at a vey young age, he was a womanizer and constantly betrayed her mother with women in and out of their apartment complex, and ultimately, he left one day and didn’t come back for a very long time. Over time as well he began to belittle her for her gender as well, and not stick up for his daughter and refused to take ownership of his transgressions – leading to the quote I selected above from the reading.

In many ways, I can relate to Diaz’s experience with her family. As a very young child, there is the tendency in our minds to idolize or demonize things, to work in extremes. I hate her because she stole my toy. My dad is the best and I love him very much. After having pizza for the first time, pizza is my favorite food in the whole world and I want to eat it for the rest of my life. This extreme way of thinking is natural when we are small children, but as we grow older we begin to grow out of it. However, sometimes in toxic, abusive, and chaotic homes, this process can be delayed or end up not happening at all. With all the extremes and prejudice Diaz otherwise experienced (about her looks, her gender, the extremes of sexuality from her mother before even hitting puberty, the fights and drama of the home and neighborhood), I don’t find it all too surprising that she wasn’t in the headspace to stop the idolization until much later – until she had her heart directly pierced by her father and he turned her mother on her for something he did. While I did not face nearly as many instabilities outside of home, my the home instabilities led to a similar experience for me. We think so many things are normal that really aren’t, as Diaz states when she reflects on her violent games that she played as a child. Only later do we realize how insanely messed up our experiences were, and how it all makes sense that we ended up behaving the way we did later on. The way we think about ourselves, the way we treat others, and our wellbeing is deeply tied to our childhood experiences – and in an environment like this, it’s only natural that the idolization a child feels can turn into something incredibly dangerous even decades into their life, for themselves and everyone around them. It’s very likely that Diaz’s mother’s experience with abuse in her own family led to her growing mental health issues with age as she ignored the effects and was thrust into an underage marriage in an extremely unstable environment.

America Is in Crisis. That's Not New for Many of Us | Time

Díaz, J. (2019). Ordinary girls: a memoir. First edition. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Thick, Black Skin

“Our heart meat was so thick. Once punctured, though we waltzed those hearts into war without a plan of escape… We heaved like two hulks.”

(Heavy- Kiese Laymon, Page 4)

The strong black woman or man trope is one that simultaneously helps and hurts black people as evident by this statement made by Laymon. He says the hearts of him and his mothers’ were thick, meaning they often powered through the struggles and emotional distress that occured in their lives. There is no escape from the stressors as it was difficult to find healthy outlets to cope. They often suppressed their traumas which was repeated behavior, which really does begin to weigh heavily on a person regardless of how emotionally resilient you think you are. He then goes on to say that black people are almost superhuman like- hints the hulk reference, and you have to be unbreakable in order to carry on in this world.

Trauma is something that almost all people endure at least once in their lifetime. Some more than others but it is not always easy to recover from. Laymon references the expectations casted by society and even other black people that black Americans are supposed to have “thick skin.” There is this notion about the black community that you must be strong all the time. You mustn’t tell anyone if you’re going through hard times or that you need help. Because of this, a lot of black Americans have deep rooted issues, traumas and emotional and physical scars due to the fact that they’re seen as weak by actually processing the pain that they’re experiencing. It is expected that you internalize trauma and simply move on, but it is clear that this behavior is very destructive to the black body and mind.