Heidi Durrow
Even though Los Angeles is currently her home, Heidi Durrow still considers herself a Portlander. She was raised in the Rose City and is one of Portland's many literary exports. Like most writers, she was bitten by the bug at a young age and remembers that all she ever wanted to do was write. She started her career as a journalist, took a detour to become a lawyer, but has come full circle back to her first love: writing.
Her other love is sharing the Mixed experience, which is her own experience; she is African-American and Danish. She writes about various issues and topics on her blog, Light-skinned-ed Girl. Next month, she is co-organizing the second annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival.
What is the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival? Where will it be held?
Heidi Durrow: The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival is a free two-day public event held annually at the Japanese American National Museum, our major sponsor, in downtown Los Angeles. This year’s Festival is June 12-13. Last year we had 200-300 attendees per day.
The Festival celebrates stories of the Mixed experience: multiracial people and families, including families and individuals of transracial/transcultural adoption. We also have many amazing events: filmmaking and writing workshops, film screenings, readings by really great writers like Danzy Senna and Gayle Brandeis, a special Family Event with a multiracial playgroup and a reading by Kim Wayans and husband Kevin Knotts who have co-authored a children’s book series called Amy Hodgepodge about a multiracial girl.
And of course, there is the largest West Coast Loving Day Party featuring the Coca–Cola Lounge, DJs, drinks, desserts and dancing. Loving Day is a nationwide celebration of the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that allowed people of different races to marry—just since 1967! The Festival also features the Loving Prize Presentation and Live Performance that features a dozen actors, musicians and comedians.
How did the Festival evolve?
HD: The Festival is the brainchild of myself and Fanshen Cox, with whom I co-host a weekly podcast called Mixed Chicks Chat. Fanshen and I are both artists –she’s an actor and filmmaker and I’m a writer –and we were so frustrated by the rejection we faced. The gatekeepers would tell us that there was no “market” for our stories even though they thought they were well written or produced. We wanted to create the forum to show them that wasn’t true and we have been so excited by the response. There are a lot of people out there like us who haven’t been able to share their work –and there are a lot of people who want to see films and read books about the Mixed experience –just as we suspected.
Are there plans to have the Festival in different cities in the future?
HD: We would love to be able to travel with the Festival program –people ask us this all the time--but we are limited by finances. It takes a lot to produce an event like this and the Japanese American National Museum has been a great support. We’re a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, a nonprofit arts organization. We finance the event with donations and out of our own pockets. And we run it as volunteers. We’d love to take the show on the road, but we just don’t have the financial capacity to do it right now.
Why is it important to highlight the contributions of Mixed persons in the areas of film and literature?
HD: We really highlight the importance of storytelling. Stories of the Mixed experience have been left out of American history—or they have been sensationalized like the tragic mulatto stories. The one-drop rule has really not allowed for us to tell our complicated stories.
Photo display at the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival
Take for example the Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen who was Black and Danish. For years, her biographers discounted her Danish heritage saying that she claimed it only because she wanted to elevate her status above other African-Americans. The truth was that she had profound family ties to her Danish relatives and Denmark. At the Festival, the stories we showcase tell the complicated story of the Mixed experience. The stories at the Festival are not erased by the one-drop rule.
Speaking of mixed persons making contributions, President Obama has become the first biracial president. But most consider him the first "black" president. What are your thoughts on this?
HD: First of all, I think our country is so lucky to have President Obama as our leader! And I was excited when people actually talked about his biracial identity and multiracial family. His candidacy opened up a whole new conversation for the nation – Obama made multiracial families visible and part of the national dialogue. It was great. But I must admit, I am concerned that the conversation ended on the day of the inauguration when Obama became the first “black” president. Yes, of course he is [black], but he’s also biracial. The media, and the public seemed to have lost that thread to his complicated story. However, I understand that he considers himself black and I believe foremost in self-identification. Sometimes I change my answer to the "What are you" question a few times a day!
And it’s only been a little over a hundred days –so maybe the discussion isn’t over—but I do worry that the nation’s missed out on a chance to re-consider the one-drop rule—to see individuals and families, and their connectedness to different races and cultures in a new way.
You're from Portland, one of the coolest cities on earth, by the way. What was your experience growing up biracial in the Pacific Northwest?
HD: I grew up during the 1980s in Northeast [Portland]—which at the time, was where all the black people (except the Trailblazers) lived! Portland was very segregated. It was the first time I had lived in a black community; before that we had lived mostly overseas on or near military bases. I was grateful that I had a chance to attend Tubman Middle School (back when it was in Southeast Portland), which at the time was very integrated—half black and half white –everyone was bused in.
So at age 11, I got “schooled” in being black. No one paid attention to the fact that I had a white Danish mom. In fact, it was kind of like she was erased. The fact that I spoke Danish at home and ate Danish foods didn’t matter. People expected me to embrace my black identity and I did. It was very difficult in ways that I couldn’t really understand at the time –I learned how to divide myself: here I am black, here I am Black and Danish, here I am just me.
What is on the radar for you for the rest of the year? I hear you have a book coming out soon?
HD: My first novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, which won writer Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change, is coming out in February 2010 published by Algonquin Books. It’s the story of a biracial/bicultural girl’s coming of age in a Pacific Northwest town. In Rachel, the protagonist, I think younger biracial kids will see themselves –but also it’s a story about the very universal struggle of growing up, figuring out who can guide you best.
I’m looking forward to sharing the book with fellow Portlanders next year. There’s a Portland stop on the book tour; I hope to be at my beloved Powell’s and maybe a little shin dig at IFCC (Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center), where I served as Student Director during high school, and maybe we can convince my old friend Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini to stop in to play a tune. All my old friends and family in Portland coming out for a book party: that would be a dream a come true!
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