"The Black Notebooks" is a brilliantly insightful journal of noted poet Toi Derricotte. She details her interaction with racially constructed identity, and the peculiarities of looking white and identifying black. In the regular world, this is no big deal. After all, for most people the world is in fact black or white, and most people who are in any way by ancestry black end up choosing to keep that socio-cultural position. Readers of Interracial Voice will most likely have come to take for granted the idea that people are not limited to either/or choices, and they actively support that third option.

Ms. Derricotte doesn't seem to view that third option as viable. The one time I can recall her saying that she was mixed, it was an admission made to avoid further examination. "Consciously I chose not to say black. I want to be invisible in my office, to go and come without that tension of being the only different one." When confronted, a declaration of mixed status does tend to end most arguments. People are more likely to say, "Oh, really? With what?" as opposed to negating your statement with, "Oh, no you're not." She doesn't address the politics of multiracial identity in "The Black Notebooks," and it's as if the possibility never existed for her. She says, "It isn't exactly that we believe in the identity foisted on us -- their one-drop rule, the idea that one drop of black blood in your ancestry makes you black. Rather, maybe we are like the kindest occupants of the poor house who, nevertheless, are eager to open our doors and let any supplicant in."

For many people, black isn't a racial term but an ethnic descriptive. Someone can be mixed in a more literal sense of being biracial, but if their upbringing is monocultural (for lack of a reasonable word), then it makes no sense for them to identify themselves as multiracial. Race isn't the defining concept here, and playing that game of "claim us if we're famous" is as inappropriate for the multiracial communities as it is for any other. Toi Derricotte has made the choice that best suits her life and experience: she is black. And isn't it ultimately about having the right to define oneself as one chooses? She had other options and simply picked the one that was most true for her...

I wept, reading this book. It is rare for me to encounter someone who shares that dilemma of walking dichotomy. To see what I had believed to be personal (and singular) pains written by someone else with perfect understanding... it was a great shock of recognition. She captures perfectly that feeling of being like an undercover agent or a fly on the wall. She makes you understand the pain of not having one's outward self match one's inner truth, through inadvertent passing. Being "in the closet" is just as painful for ethnic orientation as it is for sexual orientation, and this book does wonders for creating empathy in that regard. Of course, the appeal of "The Black Notebooks" is not limited to any special segment of the population. The questions it raises about race and identity are profound and deserve examination by everyone.

©1998 all rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part prohibited without
the express written consent of Interracial Voice.