My Father

Dear Regular Reader,

If you think I write a lot about my mother, you're right. I mean, I can't get away from that woman. My sister and I have always been dominated by her strong personality, but our mom is also like our third sister--only bossy because she's the mother, after all.

This week, I'll fill you in a little bit about my dad. That's him in the photo as a young soldier in Germany. The Winfrey's (some who are first cousins to THE Winfrey--Ms. Oprah) are planning a family reunion this summer, and my father and I plan to attend. I just hope there's something vegan I can eat in Arkansas.

Although I've written about my dad extensively in an essay included in the anthology Brothers and Others published about seven years ago, I'll brief you here.

Born in Richmond Texas in 1927, my father was the oldest of three boys and a girl belonging to Andrew and Eleanor Winfrey. A chauffeur and maid, respectively, Andrew and Eleanor saved their money and built a small hamburger stand. It was the first eatery for blacks in Richmond, and, as the years passed, my grandparents grew it into a barbecue cafe with indoor dining. (Today, there's a monument to my grandfather in Richmond.)

As a child visiting during the summers, I would wait on customers and drink strawberry soda in that smoky cafe. Behind the restaurant, my grandparents raised animals they would slaughter for everything from ribs to chitlins. Thinking about it today, my vegan stomach turns. But back in the day, it was a source of pride knowing that my kin owned their own business. That, plus I was known to scarf more than a few pigs' feet.

Not satisfied with having just a cafe, my grandfather also learned bricklaying and built several houses. The family lived in one and rented the others to tenants. But by the time my father turned 18, he decided he wanted to see the world. He wasn't crazy about the idea of working in his parents' b-b-q joint forever, and all the successful black men he knew of in his small country town had joined the military to acquire their bling. So, my dad signed up for the Army.

Well, he ended up seeing the world, all right. He was stationed in the Philippines, Korea and Japan where he met my mother. Later, he was sent to Germany (we went with him) and several other American military bases. But my father also experienced a segregated military before President Truman desegregated it. While my dad was overseas fighting for America, America represented by the Army approached restaurants and shops near military bases in foreign countries and ordered them to either serve only its black or white soldiers--but never both at the same time. Once he returned from serving his country overseas, my father struggled to find a place to live in Washington state.

Several weeks ago, I read an article about the book Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon, and it triggered something my father had told me about his childhood. He'd said that after class each day, he went to work picking cotton. Naively, I replied that it must've been nice for him to have earned some money. But my father corrected me, and clarified that neither he nor the other children were ever paid for their labor. Instead, the white people who would round them up after school each day were still practicing slavery when it was clear that slavery had been declared illegal nearly 80 years before. According to Blackmon's book, slavery continued in the south until 1945--18 years after my father was born.

If you'd like to know more about my father, I still have a few copies left of Brothers and Others. Drop me an email at watermelonsushi@comcast.net, if you're interested in getting one.

And, if you're not busy this Saturday, February 7, at 4 pm, you'll have the opportunity to listen to me being interviewed by Janice Malone at http://www.filmfestivalradio.com. Please tune in to hear us discuss multiracial issues as well the Watermelon Sushi film.

I'm also anticipating an interview with playwright and Watermelon Sushi Associate Producer Jaz Dorsey of Nashville. I'll keep you posted about when the article will appear on the AAPEX blog.

Meanwhile, if you're on Facebook, join our group on the Hip Hapa Homeez page. Dude, we're hip, we're hapa, and we're homeez!

Until next week, I am...

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

HAPA Birthday, Again, b.r.

Last Friday, I wished my sister, br, HAPA Birthday right here on this blog. A long-time friend then wrote me asking how Beverly Rhea got her name, so I'll hapa-ly explain.

Although I was born in Tokyo and promptly given a Japanese name by my Japanese mother, my sister made her way into the world via Richmond Texas. I've written before (see earlier blog titled What's In A Name?) that my mother argued with her Japanese doctors about naming me Yayoi--which, in accordance to the month I was born, was way too late in the season for me to be called thusly. But do you think my mom would allow herself to be bullied by a couple of authority figures? Not that OG rebel. She liked the name, and she didn't care if they ridiculed her or snickered in her face, she was naming me Yayoi and that's all she wrote.

But by the time my sister was born, we had left Japan. Having arrived only recently to the U.S., my mother was shy and unfamiliar with things like family hierarchy. Therefore, she quietly acquiesced to her new mother-in-law, the so-called black matriarch.

Shortly after giving birth, my mother was resting in her hospital bed when she was presented with the child she had so laboriously brought to the planet. Looking down at my baby sister, my mother was shocked to see that a name tag around her daughter's wrist showed that she had already been named without the consultation of her own birth mother!

To add insult, my mom couldn't even pronounce her new daughter's name. Try this on for size: Beverly Rhea Winfrey.

That's right. Now, if you know anything about the Japanese language, you're aware that there are no phonetics for the letter "v", and that there are no words that end with consonants--unless it's an "n". Their letter "f" is pronounced like our "wh", and their letter "r" is a combination roll that sounds like our "d". Our "l" is pronounced like an "r", and so forth. What a nightmare for my poor mom.

She probably said something like this: Beh-boo-rdee Rdee-ah Win-who-rdee-oo.

To this day, she calls my sister Beh-boo, or sometimes, just Beh. To make matters even more complicated, about 15 years ago my sister changed her name to just the initials b.r. (lower case, no space, no periods--I added them).

Sugoi, ne?

That's my mom, above, posing with my grandmother who was visiting us in Washington State in the 1960's.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Hey, fellow hip hapas, don't forget that new Hapa*Teez t-shirt designs will be uploaded soon.

Check out: http://www.cafepress.com/hapateez

And, stay tuned for the fabulous Mia Gonzalez' update of the Watermelon Sushi website.

More About War Brides

Because of an earlier blog outlining my mother's adventures as a "war bride", I received an email from Michele who is Vice President of the World War II War Brides Association. Here's her website, which is devoted to war brides of every nationality:

http://www.geocities.com/us_warbrides/

Michele is a "war baby" from Belgium.

I also received an email from Erin who handles membership for the World War II War Brides Association. Erin is a "war baby" from Australia.

I'm so thrilled these two women reached out to me because I've been thinking a lot lately about war brides. As much as I like telling the stories of biracial and bicultural children, I also realize that we wouldn't be here if our mothers hadn't taken that huge leap of faith.

For Japanese women like my mother who spoke very little English, the prospect of moving overseas with a man she'd known only a few years must have seemed monumental. That my Moms coped with Southern racism and all the wild elements of Texas (snakes, tarantulas, cockroaches, red bugs, etc.) makes her all the more courageous in my eyes. And, she did it with me as a toddler and my sister as an infant, too. Now, that's what I call strength. While it's true that dodging bombs in Tokyo may have been a little more challenging for her, living in a segregated Texas town without her own family or friends--or anyone who even spoke her language, for that matter--must've been a waking nightmare. My mother used to tell us that she cried every day during her first, horrific year in America.

If any of you out there have some good tales about your own war bride mother, please drop me a line. I'd like to share them with my readers.

And, that's my mother as a young, idealistic woman BT (before Texas) in the photo above.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

War Brides Revisited

About that phrase, "war bride"--well; it is redundant, isn't it? I mean, how does one marry a war? It's a lot like that word housewife. Are you the wife of your house? When did the two of you take your vows?

In fact, "war bride" was often derogatorily spat out towards obviously foreign women married to American GI's following WWII. And, sometimes it was used by people who were merely ignorant--like the Caucasian shopkeeper in Texas who greeted my mother with, "Are you a Jap?" He was simply using language acceptable at the time and printed in mainstream newspapers everywhere. Further, he'd never even seen an Asian before. Not that it excuses his idiocy, but my Moms is cool. She tells us that she just laughed at him like she always does when people act stupidly towards her.

There's a lot to acknowledge the brides of war for--like their courage in marrying and mating with men once considered to be an enemy of their country. Not to mention the symbolism of their union looking as if the winner is collecting his spoils. And, for those women who married American military men, moving to a strange land and leaving behind their families has to be tops on the list of brave things to do.

For my mother, coming to Richmond Texas in the 1950's was a shift in consciousness. Evidently, she'd heard the rumors about the streets of America being paved in gold, and may have even wanted to believe it after living through the devastation of her country. So, not surprisingly, she was ill-prepared for the segregated all-black housing where we ended up--she and I, before my sister was born. My father, still an active soldier then, was stationed 200 miles away and made a trip home only once every two weeks. With a limited ability to speak and understand English (especially the Southern variety), Moms somehow managed to keep my sister and me clean, well-fed, safe and entertained in that small Texas town. That clever girl even had friends sending her Japanese food--from New Jersey!

Even today, Moms still tells the tales of how she once fended off a snake that crawled over her feet after my sister, then a baby, awakened screaming one night. And, there's the story of how my paternal grandmother attempted to teach her how to wring a chicken's neck. Finding it a repugnant chore, Moms nervously attempted to cover the chicken's head in newspaper--like a blindfold--as if preventing the poor creature from seeing its executioner. But no matter how much Moms twisted, turned and swung that poor chicken around by the neck, it still walked when it landed--its head securely fastened. So, my mother changed her tactics and stepped on the chicken's head instead. By the time, she got the head removed, the muscles had become so stiff with fear that the chicken made a tough fryer. Moms laughs when she tells us how my dad tried to take a bite of drumstick, but had to settle for gnawing at it. (Personally, as a vegan, this story is hard for me to hear. Sob!)

Just like that unfortunate chicken's flesh, those were some tough times in my mother's life. She recalls being with my father's relatives one day when they were all catching a bus. As our kin climbed aboard single file, the Caucasian driver stopped my mother and waved towards our black relatives already in their seats at the rear. Smiling conspiratorially, he told Moms, "Oh, you don't have to go to the back with them." I guess he reckoned that with Mom's skin only a shade darker than his, she was qualified to ride up front with the likes of his hillbilly self.

Oh, there's more--the tarantulas covering the screen door every morning, the red bugs that ate us up so badly we looked like ashy ghosts in calamine lotion suits, and the rednecks that we didn't dare speak to first nor look directly in the eye. Backwoods Texas was the hell my mother thought she'd descended to on her very first trip to the U.S. as the bride of a war.

There's her photo, above, taken while she was pregnant with my sister.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

P.S. Don't forget to go here for some hip hapa Hapawood stars: http://www.cafepress.com/hapateez