A trio of black authors explored themes such as family history, biracial identity and upward mobility during a panel called "Memoir: Bloodlines" at the recent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA.
Led in their discussion by former Times columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan, the panel consisted of Lise Funderburg, Jennifer Baszile and Danzy Senna.
Senna authored the 1998 national bestseller "Caucasia," winner of the American Library Association's Alex Award. On May 12, publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux will release Senna's newest work, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" The memoir chronicles Senna's efforts to unearth the past of her mixed-race family.
"I had hundreds of pages of notes," Senna said of her writing. "I spent years figuring out what I would leave in and leave out."
Funderburg, author of last year's "Pig Candy" — which describes the journey she took with her dying father from Philadelphia to Georgia — faced a similar dilemma as a writer. "I might leave out an entire adolescence," she told the audience of a couple hundred in UCLA's Rolfe Hall. "Structure is to really oversimplify. But without structure," Funderburg continued, "the words on the page resemble marbles spilling randomly."
For Senna, writing a memoir not only forced her to cut out certain memories and incidents but certain family members as well. In addition, it meant choosing to paint her father, the poet Carl Senna, in a sometimes unflattering light. The memoir focuses on the turbulent marriage and subsequent divorce of Danzy Senna's parents and the impact her father, in particular, made on her life. While Carl Senna came from fragmented Afro-Mexican origins, Fanny Howe, the Irish-American mother of Danzy Senna, traces her lineage to Boston's most famed historic figures.
Senna set "Caucasia," a novel about a biracial girl who passes for white, in her native Boston. "My mother calls (it) the deep North," Senna said during the panel. "It's an incredibly racist city. It's a very racially traumatic city."
The 39-year-old writer said that when she attended Stanford as an undergraduate student, her black classmates from the South were shocked when she told them the acts of racism her family experienced in Boston, such as when white neighbors left bananas at their door, a roundabout way of calling her father a monkey.
Place also emerged as a key aspect in Jennifer Baszile's memoir, "The Black Girl Next Door," which debuted this past January. Raised in affluent Palos Verdes, Baszile endured suburbia as the only black girl in her school besides her sister. Making trips to her parents' former homes in Detroit and Louisiana helped Baszile connect to her African American roots. As an adult, Baszile broke down barriers in Yale's history department by becoming its first black female professor.
"My reception on the part of the faculty and students was very warm," she said. "I had a lovely experience."
However, a low-level player in the school — the woman who scanned faculty ID cards in the library — pointed out that Baszile didn't belong there. Aware of the long line of white men who preceded her at the Ivy League school, Baszile didn't dispute the woman's assessment. Instead, she agreed with her, Baszile confessed during the panel.
Senna and Funderberg — unlike Baszile — are biracial. They were asked to discuss how the memoir writing of America's first biracial president influenced them.
Senna stressed that she is in no way trying to compete with the president before noting, "I've been thinking about this long before Obama."
Asked if it bothers her that Barack Obama identifies as black, Senna answered that it did not. "He's very open about his multiracial background. I identify as black. It's a very mixed-race experience."
Funderburg agreed, saying that the influence of his biracial heritage emerged prominently during the speech Obama made in Philadelphia last year in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding his former minister the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
"I have the great, great fortune of having loving connections to the white and black sides of my families," Funderburg said. "I've had from birth the chance to understand how identity forms on different levels, to understand more than one side in every story."
Nadra Kareem is a writer for the L.A. Watts Times.
Photo of Danzy Senna by Anthony Nittle
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