The Good Immigrant

The universal job of being a writer is to write, to write with empathy, to be brave and honest, to find joy conveying a journey and in sharing your passion. Your ink is replenished by your life experiences, by taking off the mask and using your limitless imagination, by stepping out of the shade and into the light. As a woman may write in the voice of a man, I don't see why a writer cannot imagine the voice of another shade and culture, that is what imagination is all about. Whatever shade you are, as a writer, you have just one task each day, one battle, and that is you against the blank page. Every writer should have just that in mind, nothing else matters, just that one fight is more than enough to contend with, each and every morning.

Although my hair was different, the real change wasn't the hairstyle, but in my attitude towards feeling accepted. By conforming, I felt like I had a place in the world, and the feeling felt good. The real lesson is learning to hold on to that feeling no matter what your hairstyle is.

There is no one way to be black. Our worst performance is entertaining the idea that there is.

I don't feel as if I own, or am allowed to own, 'real suffering', because of the colour of my skin. Instead, I bear a different kind of badge, one I'm supposed to be pleased about: 'model minority'. Is yellow too pale a colour to shout about? 

I pull up a chair and wait to be processed. I wait here while you print off your labels, and consider me for your boxes marked black as in black-black or black as in brown-black, or brown as in half-black or brown as in half-caste. But hang on a minute. Surely if I am from two colours, two races, I am two shades, and therefore not half-caste, not half-anything, but whole, I am double caste. But half sounds shadier. Half is best because half means less. You lose. You are half a person. We don't want you getting all empowered, now do we.