One Brown Girl: One Diverse World

Hey, Hip Hapa Homeez! If you’ve been reading Watermelon Sushi World for any length of time, then you must know that enka singer Jero is a hero of mine. If you’re not familiar, Jero’s mother is Japanese and African American, and her mother (Jero’s grandmother) taught her grandson to speak Japanese and sing enka--a traditional Japanese style of blues that originated as agitprop during the Meiji period in Japan. As time would have it, enka lyrics later transitioned into love songs. What Jero has done as a young, mostly black man from Philly is to turn attention back onto a form of music most Japanese youth, unfortunately, have no interest in. Very few new Japanese artists these days sing enka and it is seriously in danger of dying. Koukai!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enka

Jero on Kohaku Uta Gassen, NHK

Anyway, Jero will be performing at UC Berkeley next month at the Hapa Japan Conference, which will focus on mixed Japanese. Open to the public, the event will be held April 8 and 9 and is organized by Professor Duncan Ryuken Williams. For more information, email dunryu@gmail.com and be sure to stay tuned for my report following the conference.

Tracey Friley

With people like Jero on the planet, our world is becoming more diverse all the time. It’s always exciting to connect with those who advocate cross-cultural exchanges and Tracey Friley is one such person. 

Check out her One Brown Girl website here:

www.OneBrownGirl.com then, read about her below.

Q: Tracey, you connect with people all over the planet. Where do you get your incredible sense of worldliness? Did you grow up with parents who encouraged travel or crossing cultures?

A: Wow. I like being called worldly! I don’t remember a time when I didn’t travel, really. As a child, it was with my family, but I don’t remember specifically being encouraged to cross cultures. It has always been a way of life to get to know people from anywhere and everywhere no matter what their cultural background is. In fact, the less like me people are, the more I want to know about them. It’s just a way of life.

One Brown Girl travels the globe...

Q: What's the most interesting cultural tidbit you've discovered in your travels?

A: I don’t know how interesting it is, but I’ve come to realize that people are the same wherever you go. Some are good, some are bad. It doesn’t matter what culture they’re from. The only difference is the location.

Q: One of your website’s surveys shows that 54% of your readers would marry someone from a different religion. Do you think we're becoming more tolerant, overall? 

A: I would like to think so. Of course, you can hear the intolerant a lot louder than you hear the tolerant, so it’s hard to tell sometimes. I do think that most young people are more culturally tolerant and accepting than the previous generation.

Q: However, by the same token, another poll indicates that 32% versus 29% of your readers feel that racism will never end. Comments? 

A: That’s a hard question to answer and very thought-provoking. Racism is so prevalent on a global scale that it’s hard to imagine that it’ll ever end sometimes. 

Q: Your One Brown Girl products are incredibly relevant and popular. Do you design them yourself?

A: Thanks! Yes, the designs are all original. I'm a creative with no graphic artist abilities, so I take what’s in my brain and work with a brilliant (and patient) graphic artist who makes One Brown Girl come to life.  She is a caricature modeled after me…and you…and all of the other Brown Girls out there in the world.  

beautiful Brown Girls make a pyramid

Q: Tell us about some of your activities for Brown Girls. 

A: Right now, I own and operate a two-year old travel and learning adventure camp program for girls 11-16 nationwide, that is very important to me: 

http://obgadventurecamps.com/ 

In fact, the idea for my program can be found on Oprah’s Angel Network. I also operate a niche concierge service for adults that travel to Paris every November. I just love Paris! I have tons of ideas for the OBG brand, but I have more ideas than I have the (wo)manpower or time to implement right now, so I’m staying committed to activities that directly give women and girls a world view…for now.

Brown Girls chillin'...playin' it by ear...

Q: What’s next? 

A: I just want the cross-cultural dialogue to continue. I want to keep blogging and celebrating culture and inspire others to learn about others. I want to empower and inspire Brown Girls to feel good about the skin they’re in by reiterating interesting cultural facts and sharing travel and culture stories. I’ve got a unique thing going on in that I’m not just celebrating one cultural or ethnic group. It takes a lot of time to get people to buy into something they don’t typically do; so, most of the time, I’m just playing it by ear anyway.

Thank you, Tracey!

Well, Hip Hapa Homeez there’s a lot of excitement on the horizon. Our internet show, Sexy Voices of Hollywood, was created to financially support the production of our Watermelon Sushi film, and S.V.O.H. just launched its 10^th show with distribution by Sony! You can support the film by supporting the show at www.youtube.com/sexyvoiceshollywood or by joining the S.V.O.H. event and/or fan pages. Meanwhile, there are some funky things going on at Facebook. The Hip Hapa Homeez group can’t seem to invite new members, so if you’re on Facebook, please go to the page and sign up. This is where we post news about multiracial communities, transracial adoptees and those who cross cultures. Of course, if you join the Watermelon Sushi Fan page (can that still even be done, Mr. Z.?), we will love you to death. And, by making a Hapa*Teez t-shirt purchase you'll get your name in the rear crawl credits of the film. Btw, if you’ve bought a t-shirt in the past, please get in touch with us so we can have the correct spelling of your name. Just drop us an email: hapateez@me.com Apologies for our scarce and anemic tweets, but we do promise to follow you if you follow us: http://twitter.com/watermelonsushi or http://twitter.com/sexyvoices

cutie Cassie in her Hapa*Teez t-shirt

Until we meet again, I am now and forever…

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Erotic Multicultural Paranormal: Storyteller

Hey, Hip Hapa Homeez! Welcome back to our World of Watermelon Sushi where we address all manner of cross-cultural, multi-ethnic and transracial adoptee concerns.

Again, your support is appreciated so please join our Hip Hapa Homeez group page on Facebook where you are welcome to post links of interest to blendies and mixies. You can also “like” our Watermelon Sushi Fan page to keep updated on news about the Watermelon Sushi film. And, your purchase of a Hapa*Teez t-shirt helps us move towards our goal of completing the film. Please let us know when you buy one so we can add your name to our growing list of credits. Finally, you can also follow our erratic tweets on Twitter.

Hip Hapa Homeez, you rock! And, so does author T J Michaels, our featured Hip Hapa Homee this week. Check out her links here, and photos of her and her books below.

http://www.tjmichaels.com/bookshelf

www.tjmichaels.com

www.twitter.com/tj_michaels

Q: What's a nice African American girl like you doing writing about erotic, paranormal, interracial romance?

A: Believe it or not, this all started almost twenty years ago. One of my girlfriends and I had picked up our first romance novel. It was called Golden Surrender by Heather Graham. After reading it, my thought was it’s a great story; I could probably write something like it. So I sat down and started writing. That book turned out to be 150 thousand words! Of course, I had no idea what I was doing really. Then I raised my kids, went through a divorce, established a career, blah blah blah. Then a few years back, in 2005 to be exactly, I got back on the romance bandwagon. Only it was now much wider and had more genres than just the historicals I'd read ages before. Now there were vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, as well as contemporary romances. And, the women were kick-ass, and the sex scenes were a lot hotter than way back when. Being comfortable with all of the above, I sat down and penned my first erotic romance with a Native American twist called Primed to Pounce. It was also the first book that I sold to a publisher under contract. It's available for Amazon Kindle.

Since then I've sold about ten more books and I write a mix of hot vamps, weres, contemporaries, and sci-fi romance for three publishers--in addition to the day job, of course.

Q: Where and how did you grow up?

A: I was born and raised in San Francisco. My parents were from the South, but my sisters and I all grew up in the city. My parents were a strange mix of old and new school. They taught us not to care so much about race since we were of various cultural backgrounds. On the other hand, they still had some of their old hang-ups from being exposed to the racial inequality of the South back in the 1960's.

Q: Did you always want to write, and how did you get you started?

A: Back in 2005 after I decided I wanted to finally get published, I talked to my children about it. They'd been asking me over the years when I was ever going to do something with "the big book", as they called it. I decided that with them being a bit older, it was a good time for me to take some time to do something I'd wanted to do for myself for years. They supported me by understanding when I needed time to write, and by making lots of coffee runs for me to the Starbucks around the corner. Every single book I've written has a dedication to them in the front. They've helped me figure out sticking points in plots, figure out titles, and tell their friends’ parents about my books every chance they get.

Q: Do you have any favorite characters that you’ve created, or books that you wrote?

A: Absolutely! I think my favorite series I've written so far is the Vampire Council of Ethics trilogy. The women are smart, professionals and the men are alphas to the bone without being jerks. It makes for lovely tension. Oh, and the bad guys? Damn. You'll hate 'em...which is just what I want. Smile. After that, my favorite book is Jaguar's Rule. It's a book about a black (or African American if you feel like being politically correct) female jaguar shapeshifter. She runs a bed and breakfast in Belize where she also works as a ranger in the only jaguar sanctuary in the world, which happens to be a real place. She also teaches scuba diving on her off hours...until her mate crash lands, literally, in the jungle.

Q: What's this about you wanting to open a school that teaches Japanese culture and language?

A: You know, even though we're Native American, French and black (and my kids have a lot of Irish and Native American on their father's side as well), we also have love for other cultures and countries. Japan is one of those countries. My daughter plans to head over there to live, work and, hopefully, teach. When she started learning the language, we all started getting more deeply into understanding the culture than we ever had before. We fell in love with Japan all over again. So now we want to bring the language, history and culture of Japan together with the ingenuity and business acumen of America in a high school for young ladies. We're hoping that families here and in Japan will send their girls to our academy...but first, we've got to build it! 

Q: Why do you think it's important that people cross cultures or mix it up?

A: You know, we all have the same DNA and come from the same earth no matter what race we are. There's no single race that is perfect, and there is no single race that is totally flawed. We all have something to contribute to society. When I was growing up, on our block we had young and old, black, white, Samoan and Filipino. And, that was just on our one block. Our neighborhood had some of everybody from everywhere and nobody cared. We rode bikes together, had block parties together, roller skated together; my mom cleaned up their scraped knees, and their moms cleaned up ours.

As a result, I can't seem to help but write multicultural, interracial novels. Every single book I've written to date has a mix of cultures in it - black, white, Japanese, East Indian, Native American, the works.

Q: What's on the horizon, and what should your fans expect?

A: I just sold two new books. One is a contemporary paranormal that deals with the ancient people of Atlantis, and the other is a science fiction romance where our lead girl is a Super Soldier on the run from the people who created her. Now that those two have been sold, I'm working on four others. Two of them are follow-ups to Spirit of the Pryde--a book about four black women who are sisters and African lion shifters. They're technology and scientific geniuses for their day jobs. At night, they're bounty hunters for the shifter community. I'm also working on rewriting the original book I started more than fifteen years ago, in addition to a new contemporary. My brain is a bit full so I need to get some of these books out of my head and onto paper so I can make room.

Wow! Amazing, astounding and all around awesome. Thanks, T.J.!

Hey, Hip Hapa Homeez, check out the pix of Eva, above, in her Hapa Nation Hapa*Teez. Don’t hate, order your own!

Until the next time, I am…

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi