Happy Hapa Leap Year!

In celebration of Leap Year, and the end of February, I've decided to cut back on blogging from nightly to maybe 2 or 3 times a week. Yeah, you heard that right. The Biracial Bloggerette is giving her fingers (and her mind, believe it or not) a much-needed break.

For one thing, I really could use the extra time to focus on creating more designs for the Hapa*Teez line of t-shirts that I'm getting tremendous response for--thank you, Watermelon Sushi fans!

Also, I'm currently producing several documentaries focused on the biracial and bicultural communities. Ever since I met the wonderful ladies of the WWII War Brides Association, I've been hearing that having two Caucasian parents from different countries was as much a traumatic experience for them as being of two ethnicities was for some of us mixed-race folks. I've been told about religious differences, language barriers, and hostile in-laws who refused to accept that their sons had married and brought home foreigners considered enemies of America. I think exploring the whole war brides phenomenon could be a monumental undertaking.

Along with the first hints of Spring, the weeks to come promise more interesting topics so don't stop reading my blog. Try these on for size:

1. Dealing With Tight Hair When Your Entire Life Experience Consists Of Handling Only Your Own Straight Locks: My mom used to blow dry our hair with an inverted vacuum cleaner hose, then rub sticky Alberto VO 5 petroleum jelly throughout it. My sister and I hated having our hair combed by her rough, pulling hands!

2. Asians And Toilet Paper: What's the deal with that? Why does my mom have rolls of that stuff laying around all over her house, and why do Asians prefer it over boxes of tissue to stick underneath their rear car windows?

3. Hapa, Puhleez! Why some hapa folks just get on my nerves. I may even name names. Well, at least in code.

4. Seven v. Seven: There are seven Japanese gods called kamisama takarabune and there are Seven African Powers with beginnings in Benin. What's up with that number 7, and how are the deities alike?

5. Hip v. Dork. Why are blacks considered hip and Asians dorks? I've met folks of both races that were just the opposite, so let's explore that.

6. "Yo!" in Ebonics means one thing. "Yo!" in Japanese means, well, it can mean several things.

7. Speaking of slang, what is up with the phrase "da kine"? People in Hawai'i love to use it, and I suspect that it has origins with the first Japanese that settled on the islands.

8. Hapa Friends Feature: There are some strong supporters of the hapa agenda out there that I'd like acknowledge. Whenever I can, I'll get them to write a Guest Blog. Otherwise, I'll talk about them myself. People like Chicago artist Laura Kina and her Hapa Soap Opera series and the fabulous Jen Chau of http://www.swirlinc.org in NYC deserve kudos for keepin' it real. That's Jen in the pix above, on the right with my friend Doris Wong, taken when I visited NYC a few years ago. There's more, like high school teacher Paulette Q. Thompson, but I'll shout-out the rest next time.

Meanwhile, oyasuminasai.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi