sunday

Identity is an odd little beast. I have been reading a lot on other blogs about how people identify themselves. I’ve been thinking about growing up in my very “white” town in Maine and how in every society there tends to be a need to classify people. I was 12 when I was told not to date the “French” boys.

I also think about this a lot as a parent. Both my daughters go to an international peace school and I can honestly say that none of their friends come close to looking alike. We live on a street made up of a lot of same sex partners (most have children) and it is openly discussed at the dinner table the different ways to think, love and live.

When I read other people’s blog about the racism they have encountered I realize I live in a bubble. Well in some ways.

What’s interesting to me is that in writing I have felt this same boxed in feeling. I have been told more times than not, what a poet is suppose to be and what a poet with two children is supposed to look like. When I received one of my first poetry awards, with a poem I had written about living in Haiti, I was told they would rather I did not “read” the poem out loud because I turned out to be white yet I could to keep the $100.00 check.

And I wonder if what ever feels the most freeing to a person (gender, sexuality, love) are the things that society at large tries to control because there is nothing more frightening than freedom.

http://www.jubilat.org/n8/colburn.html