Hero: A Woman, a Myth but not a Guy.

Hero is the name of a young woman.

 Hero has her own myth. She was purportedly the priestess of Aphrodite, which is interesting because her name has more to do with the Great Goddess Hera, and names have symbolic meaning.|One can hypothesize that this myth once belonged to Hera and only later was attributed to Aphrodite or that Aphrodite was once one of the many faces of Hera, the Great Goddess, The Great Goddess had three faces: youth, matron and crone. Aphrodite is somewhere between youth and matron, sexual but not pregnant or doing all she can to get pregnant but not yet there. Lastly, one may suggest that Hero's mom liked the name, except that it was common for priestesses to take a new name when going into service like nuns do today.

 The myth is even stranger than the names imply,  Hero stays in a tower by the sea. We can hear the beginnings of fairy tales like Rapunzel and other captured maiden stories or can we? Like Rapunzel, Hero has a lover, here named Leander, who must cross the sea to be with her in her secluded location. Nightly, he swims out to her. She keeps a lit lantern out for him. It must have been pretty big to be seen a mile away. That is the distance Leander had to swim across the Hellespont. These lovely meetings went on all summer.



It is not until winter storms come that there is trouble in paradise. One terrible night, the sea is whipped by storms and Leander is beaten by the once docile waves. A cruel wind blows out Hero's torch. Leander is either overcome by the current or lost in the darkness. His body is found the next day.

There are a lot of unanswered questions in this myth. My husband asked," Why didn't he just use a boat?" Yeah. Why didn't he? That s a great question. I asked why Hero was sitting alone by the sea? Where was everybody else all night long? And there are a lot more weird little details in this myth that make you not want to take it at face value.

So, let's pick it apart. Now, we know Aphrodite is associated with the sea, water, and fecundity. Moisture and women, or their vaginas, always go together in symbolism. Still, Hero seems quite alone to be a Priestess; there is not even Poseidon who drowned Leander. It is empty of sisters, townspeople and even friends.

Another important unexplained detail is that Leander is from Abydos, a town in Asia Minor, while Hero is from Greece. Now those two regions had been enemies for a while--think Trojan War. Abydos is listed as an ally of Troy in The Iliad. Later, it would be the launching point for the Persian Xerxes in his invasion of Greece, and it would be celebrated by the historian Polybius for resisting Philip of Macedon (Alexander the Great's father). So, here we have a young girl, a priestess, in a tower that overlooks the sea. She has a lantern in the window. She sounds like she is a part of a modern day lighthouse. She keeps the light or holy flame going to keep ships and things safe for passage.

So what is she watching for? Hero might be there to see if enemy ships were coming across; we don't know if there was animosity between Europe and Asia at the time, but it is interesting that she is overlooking the body of water between what might be enemy countries.  If there was even a bit of tension between these peoples that would add to the proto-Romeo-and-Juliet element in the story. Shakespeare was aware of  the story and mentions it in "Two Gentlemen of Verona."  Two lovers from opposite sides of the Hellespont, from two different continents and from two different peoples fall in love. He must swim under cover of night to be with his beloved in a "love conquers all" kind of thing. This may be how it originally began, or not.  It  sounds good though.

We can presuppose that Hero is the guardian or protector of the light at the lighthouse/temple. She  has a lot of people's lives in her hands. Tending the flame was most likely an all-important task. Hero was important. Her ministering the flame may have saved may lives. We know that on stormy nights the light in a lighthouse is all that may stand between a sailor and certain death. The tragedy then is that the storm blows out the eternal flame in the lighthouse, which could have also been a shrine or temple in old days that served as a place of worship and and light for ships.

When then light goes out in a storm, that is a catastrophe. Many people, not just Leander, may have died.  He may have been one among many, but then the story would lose its focus and theme. Distilling it down to a pair of star-crossed lovers makes it more powerful and captivating. It could also help remind people when it is safe to cross the Hellespont (not in winter!). It could be warning tale for foolish young lover or seamen who want to cross. 

The little details that remain from the story are so enticing and interesting, one always wants to dig deeper and know more. While many have said that the word Hero today comes from the Ancient Greek word ἥρως, meaning "protector" or "warrior" and has nothing to do with Hero from the myth, I posit that it seems Hero was a guardian of the lighthouse or a temple dedicated to an eternal flame and was doing just what her named implied, protecting sailors from harm at sea.

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Who were the Thanksgiving Indians?

Though very few people have ever heard of the Wampanoag Tribe, they are the Native people who were living near Plymouth rock and  welcomed the Pilgrims and fed them a nice meal some four hundred years ago.  Those are my people. So, my great-grandmother told me when I was five and sat in her kitchen with my hands folded on her neat white and red checkered table cloth.  When I had problems pronouncing the name (I had a lisp), she simply said, "We are the Thanksgiving Indians." She also told me we were the people of the Sun, of the East.  She went on to say that many of our people died after the coming of the Europeans.  Actually, fifty-thousand died of plague.  What disease did not finish off, King Philip's War did.  That was the point when the People of the Wampanoag Confederacy had enough of the encroaching foreigners and decided to fight back.  They were slaughtered to the man.

If you think I want you to spit out the turkey you have so happily ingested on this Holiday in the name of my fallen ancestors,  that's okay, you don't have to.  It is true for many years, even as a little one, I harbored deep rage at the idea that my relatives fed and nurtured their would-be murderers and that their kindness came back to bite them.  I thought that if they had just let them starve to death, then they might have gone away.  Maybe my people would still have their land and be at peace. Perhaps all the Africans that were needed to make this land great and habitable would not have been dragged from home and family and brought here to be worked to death, but I am not a little girl anymore.  I know now that even if the Wamponoag  who had walked out of those woods with food in arm, had turned on the Pilgrims on that day instead of feeding them, the Europeans would have sent another group and another group.  Europe had a lot of people to get rid of and eventually one group would have made a foothold. It is interesting though that a group of people fleeing persecution in Europe would turn around and persecute others in the same vicious manner and for the same reason of difference. It seems as if they only wanted tolerance for themselves and not everyone, which is selfish, ignorant and brutal. It makes you think they deserved to suffer and should have suffered more until they learned kindness and generosity.

My Ancestors

One could be angry at such people, but being angry does nothing but make the angry person miserable. It does not hurt the offender in any way especially since the Pilgrims died long ago. Being angry would only make my life worse. So, instead of being angry, now I think about the humanity of my ancestors. I know the way European-Americans describe Native people as being savage, but so are most European-Americans when faced with an intruder in their home. That is why we have guns and "a stand your ground rule." Natives have also been described as foolish, easily tricked and manipulated, but I have found that most good people are easily tricked when they have no deceit in them.  I am glad that when my ancestors were faced with the sight of people starving to death in the snow, they bravely put aside their prejudices and offered these other human beings sustenance.  They looked beyond the difference in skin color, in culture, and saw simply other hungry human beings.  I would not for the world that they had done differently. Yes, even though they died by the thousands because of their kindness. I was taught to believe in reincarnation. The soul does not die. My people either went on to another plane of existence because of their goodness (or they were reborn elsewhere We need more good people in this country.)

 I would rather be related to such kind, openhearted people than butchers who could not see the humanity in another person because of the color of their skin and felt justified in treating them inhumanly.  I would have nothing to be proud of if the Wamponoag had sat in fear of the future and allowed other people to starve. Their actions were not foolish but showed a profound goodness that I can only aspire to.  It is true that I wish the racist Pilgrims had been worthy or capable of understanding this superior gift and that they had acted in kind.  I wish as a nation we were all capable of truly living up to the sacrifice of the moment and seeing beyond the skin to the soul within.  Thanksgiving  commemorates the moment when two peoples met and one rose above their fears of difference to help others in need.

On this Thanksgiving, I hope that each of us remembers the Wamponoag who were described by the Pilgrims  as an especially tall and handsome people, intelligent and kind.  Without their goodness, we all would not be here today.  I hope one day, this great nation can follow their example instead of the one of fear and hatred the Pilgrims brought with them from across the sea.  I hope one day we will be as brave, as kind, as  good and openhearted as the Wampanoag were. My ancestors would have adjured me to try and change the world with my goodness, yet not allow the darkness in the world to change me. On this day, as a Wampanoag descendant, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving as I know my ancestors would have wanted me to.


If you agree, then please share and like this message of forgiveness and peace and bring the Wampanoag and their kindness and bravery back into the story of Thanksgiving.

Race, Class and the Watermelon Men of Brooklyn.

When I was a girl living in East New York, I remember summer time by the arrival of the Watermelon men. In my mind, they remind me of Christina Rossetti’s poem "The Goblin Market." They were magical men with fruit in their hands ready to sell. They came from far away in a semi-truck. They were dark-skinned, almost burned black, even when it was not that hot in Brooklyn. They seemed to come from some far off secret place that grew watermelons like I had never seen.

Where we lived there was only the A&P or Key Food stores. In our neighborhood, the fruit was not that good. The white owners trucked in the worst of the worst produce. It stank or was pale and wilted. My mother never shopped there. She always went to the Jewish neighborhood or a whiter one. There they had better everything, even nicer watermelons. Though white people say it is a black thing, watermelons disappear in their stores just as fast if not faster than in black neighborhoods. When I was young, I always knew everything was better in white neighborhoods except for those watermelons.

They were big, as long as my arm and green with big dirty yellow spots. The men would come and park on a Brooklyn street near a bus stop. My mother and I would get off and there they would be. They looked tall to me standing in the back of their truck. They had a little table to show their wares. Sometimes if we were lucky, they would cut a watermelon right in front of us. The man was thin, sinewy, not handsome but kind of in the way that dirt is beautiful and good. His eyes were bright and sharp from working hard. He wore a tight t-shirt sometimes striped. He would raise a dark hand with that big old machete in it and go thunk, and the watermelon would fall open, split open all red. Then came the smell. The smell you could follow all the way back to Africa. It was that good, that deep, that sweet. You could smell the hands and the pockets that had carried watermelon seeds from their home all the way here past a great ocean, past great cruelty and chains.  The little back seeds filled with hope, the past, and taste.

My mother would yell, "Which one is good?"

The man yelled back, "They’re all good, mam!"

Then came the call, the magic call.

"Watermellllllllllons! Watermelllllllonen!" he yelled, leaning out from the back of the truck hand to his mouth, hanging by one arm.  It boomed across city traffic and sidewalks, and crowds and made them all go away. People would look up from whatever they were doing, whatever hardships and terrors and sadness and come get them some sweet, sweet watermelon.

My mother sometimes had a wagon, sometimes not. If not, we took turns carrying that huge thing like it was a baby cradled in our arm as we walked back home. When we entered the house. we told anyone who was there what we had. The word ‘watermelon’ would fill the house like some ghost, and my grandmother would smile her toothless smile.

Then we would cut it, not because we wanted to ruin its beautiful green skin or hurry summer along, but because it demanded to be cut. It would fall open on the table like a woman spreading her thighs. Then the smell would fill the house. It would cling in the refrigerator for weeks. Whenever you opened it, you knew it was watermelon time.

We would eat the crisp soft flesh, and it was like honey on the tongue. You could eat it down to the rind. It was that sweet, that good.  It brought laughter with it. It brought out tables and napkins. It made us sit in the backyard together and talk. It made my grandma say "Umh-umh-umh that's good." It was a magic fruit filled with good times. There would be only one of those in the summer. The watermelon man's truck always emptied quickly.  It was always gone too soon.

But when he came, I didn't live in some crime-ridden neighborhood, disadvantaged, beleaguered, and trodden down by racism, favoritism and sadness. No. I was someplace special, someplace where I got something good for being who I was, for living where I did.         

Is the Devil really God in disguise?

I have been recently thinking about the  devil. Actually, I was laughing about him. My husband and I were talking about how, according to the devil myth, all the interesting people would probably go to hell and some of the more adventurous might even enjoy the torture. Then it hit me. Why is the devil torturing "bad" people? He is evil himself. Wouldn't he be recruiting them?  He is the fallen angel rebel. Why is he punishing people who are sinning?  Hell is his kingdom. He can do as he pleases down there, so why is he doing God's job? I mean, isn't that good?

 According to many  religions, people who sin should be punished by God. So, why is the evil devil doing that? Isn't he against God? He also seems to test people's moral strength like in the Book of Job and other stories. Shouldn't he be embracing you when you do evil? Shouldn't he be putting an arm around you and welcoming you to the land of your most evil dreams? Shouldn't he be recruiting bad people to fill the ranks of his evil army with which he will eventually rise up and fight God?  But instead,  he is meting out biblical punishment to people who did exactly as he did?  Hmm. That does not make any sense to me unless the devil is just another face of God.

Jesus is supposedly the compassionate face of God. We also have God, the father. He is all judgement and law. Is the devil just a mask for the punishing face of God, the enforcer and executioner? I know people have a big problem understanding a God that is not perfectly good according to our tiny brains. So, maybe this is an attempt to explain the multifaceted and inexplicable nature of the complex universe. Religions make up the devil to do what God says he wants done with sinners but is too good himself to do. That way people don't have to deal with that part of  God and can just tuck it away in the Big Scary Dark Side and ignore it. In this way, they also don't have to deal with the dualistic nature of the universe. They can keep it nice and simple.

Religions demand that bad people be punished for disobeying their laws. So, unless the Devil (or his many  counterparts in religion) is either working for God or is God, he is being a very good boy and that is weird.

What is Enlightenment and how do you get it?

Enlightenment, from what I have understood from reading and experience, is what lies at the end of this journey. It is the far off light that beckons through the dark forest of our past. It is the thing we want to reach more than anything, but which lies just beyond the things we fear the most. The forest we must cross is the forest of lies, deception, death, illusion, fear, judgement, curses, envy, attachment, debt and delusion. We will all turn back in fear and horror many times from the straight path because it is so hard to face the things we fear. We all get lost that way by giving more meaning to what happens to our bodies than we are meant to.

Recently, I remembered being murdered as a two and a half year old child. It is hard to recall being killed. It is even worse when the one who murdered you was your mother. I wept. I gasped, I felt pain in my throat until I forced myself to realize that I have another body now whose throat has not been cut. I am living another life. I was not murdered. I am still alive. Society demands vengeance for such an act. It demands retribution. The bible says, "A life for a life."

 People think that karma is what others owe us, but even if you believe another owes you something, you will remain trapped on the endless wheel and cycle of owing and debt.  Being attached to that idea only brings you back to those same negative people, that same negative situation. Trying to get revenge or compensation binds you to that person. . An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. A life for a life kills us all. If I kill the woman who was my mother then she may want revenge for her life. She then kills me and owes me a life and so on, forever. We will be stuck trying to get what we believe is owed us by the other life after life again and again, and I can only consider that hell.

So, I have let go of my attachment to my death, to my idea of reparation. I have walked away. I am owned nothing. I owe nothing. In that way, I  begin to detach myself from the illusion of life and death of debt to others and their debt to me. We are all immortal. We are souls on a an endless journey. Our only suffering is when we become too attached to our bodies or our lives and believe we are flesh not soul. That would mean I would still be a helpless two-and -half year old child and one who wants to be that forever. I want to more. I want freedom and choice.

That brings me to the idea of how people raise their children as if they are keeping slaves. They believe these people belong to them instead of the idea that these are beings who have chosen and given their parents the honor of helping them when they are helpless. The Native American culture I was taught allowed children to make mistakes, to be free to decide what they must do with their lives. They taught independence and strength. I am glad that I was introduced to that idea so early by my father. It has allowed me to release my feelings of responsibility and the idea that I can save anyone.

I can only save myself and in that way show others that they can be saved. One must let go of the attachment to the egoistic idea that we are the only ones who can save someone or that others are powerless to save themselves. Others must grow in strength too. They have their own paths to follow and mistakes to make. Each of us is responsible to ourselves only. Each of us must find the strength to go through the forest and find the light. We each must desire to be enlightened. That is the first step  while letting go is one of the last. When we emerge from the forest of our fears and hubris and find that there was someone beside us the whole time striving like us, then we are doubly blessed by the sacred knowledge that none of us is alone.

May your suffering soon bring you Enlightenment,




Candice Raquel Lee
Author of  The Innocent: A Love Story  

and Effed Up: An Abnormal Romance

A tongue-in-cheek look at today's selfish and sex-obsessed  world.

Fairy Tales and Fantasies for Hopeless Romantics 

New sweet and gentle Classic Fairy Tales

Enlightenment: Women need not apply

"Just add a bra. He'd be a girl"

We all have heard of enlightenment. In most cultures, it is the highest achievement of the soul ... I mean a male soul. Of course, that is a ridiculous statement. Souls don't have gender, but like everything else the most talked about stories of reaching enlightenment or being enlightened belong to men. We have all heard of Buddha and Christ. We have heard of Siddhartha or Gautama Buddha leaving his wife and child and going on a path to liberate every other person . . . I mean guy. His precepts are primarily directed to men, and we are more likely to have heard of Buddhist monks than nuns. I am quite sure many women have reached enlightenment. Why their stories are not as popular, I have no idea. Why the face of temptation is a woman's for Christ (Mary Magdalene), Siddhartha (Mara) and others, I am not sure. Perhaps women are seen by men as the last attachment. Oddly the attachment is not at the heart but at the groin. These women always offer sexual temptation. Perhaps that speaks to the relationship these enlightened men have had with the women in their lives. It is one of lust and not love. This is not a very enlightened perspective.

It seems that on the way to rejecting all bodily desire, men run away, seeking isolation. They don't bring their wives or lovers.  They have what I like to call singular or single-sex enlightenment. Which is odd because many belief systems speak of duality, mostly letting the guys have all the good stuff and the girls get all the yucky, sticky, slow and bad attributes. That does not really seem enlightened, yet that is how the story goes. Alone, men seek the high ground and return to give the good news to men that the way to a good life is rejecting women and the world. These men do not see women as beings seeking enlightenment too. They see women as a bump in the road to enlightenment, an afterthought.

This leads me to question whether enlightenment is all that enlightened. I mean, sure, one should reach for the good and pure, but when it causes you to ignore more than half of the population in your quest, I start to wonder how good your enlightenment ears were listening. I cannot believe these men got the whole message. I think they heard what they wanted to hear or at the very least what was passed down to us is a skewed and incomplete message. As we know, truth does not do well on this plane of existence. It can hardly survive. So, I think the message is incomplete at best.

I have read many stories about enlightenment... I mean men's journeys to enlightenment from Augustine to The Alchemist.  According to Joseph Campbell, and other men, woman are temptresses in the Hero Cycle. Once again, woman is being viewed by the male penis eye and not as a human being with needs. Woman in men's psyches becomes the embodiment of the physical world which he must leave to ascend. How sick and sexist is that?

The Hero doesn't turn to the woman and say," I'm sick of this shit. How about you?" then takes her hand as they go off to seek spiritual peace together.

No. In literature women like to grovel in despair and evil, and we never learn. Women seem to always say, "No. Life is hell, but I like it this way. You go and get that thing called 'In light in mint' I'll stay here suffering. Go. Have fun."

So, the man goes and leaves the woman  and sometimes a child and reaches what I like to call "Callous enlightenment." This may be why these guys keep coming back or promising to return. I think they have something to learn about the true nature of everyone's soul. It is the same. Gender does not matter. All souls share the same desire for freedom. Yes, I know, no one can help another on the path of enlightenment. Sure. That's why men have so many helpers just waiting to aid and support him. He has signs and magical occurrences to keep him on the right path, but he can't give a sister a hint or hand up?  And when a man does get to that glowy stage, he returns at the journey's end to give sage advice to other men never a woman. We have to raise a hand or jump up and down to get his notice. Unfortunately our breasts bob up and down, and he gets tempted and walks away.

In a lot of literature, women seem to be the road upon which men seeking spirituality must tread. How come I never read a story where the woman says, "You know, I've been waiting and trying to figure a way out of this terrible life myself. You know this enlightenment crap sounds good. I think I'd like to try it. It's got to be better than what I have now. I'll just leave my kids and husband and find it." Oh yeah, I know why: because then everyone(man and woman) would hate her and say she was a despicable person who abandoned her responsibilities. Well, you've got to break a few rules to reach enlightenment. This is, of course, socially easier for guys than girls.

And even if a woman did try and go off with a man to find enlightenment, he would turn to her and say, "Sorry sister, this is a one man show, plus I am horny for you and enlightenment states you must give up the body, and I don't want to when I look at you."

Then she says, "That's okay I was faking it all the time. I'm ready for enlightenment."

"But I want sex and you remind me of it."

"I thought enlightenment meant you transcended all that. So, transcend."

"I can't with you looking like that," he says and goes away.

"Then you are not ready, Grasshopper," the woman yells,  then she goes into forest, listens to birds and trees and river, hears OM and transcends. Alone without writing a whole book about it, pounding her chest and saying how great she is and making people worship her.

There is, though, another side of the coin, one on which women are stamped as so good even our farts are enlightened.  In a few religions, it has been posited that women can stay home and stare at walls because we are perfect.  The Alchemist  also slings this type of hooey.  Basically,  just strap us in a chair as infants and then open the closet door twenty years later, and we will be perfectly normal and fully formed, no experience necessary.  We will be wise and helpful to a man in trouble and will hurl advice at him from the tent door as he goes on to have fun and find out what life is about while we sit at home waiting for him to come back and be a better man or forget to come back and be a better man.

So, women are either nasty god-forsaken sex tempters or angelic wise women? Nope, we are just like every other person, flawed, wise, stupid, silly, brave, cowardly, and enlightened.  You want to know what a woman is? Go look in the mirror and because then you'll see a person and that is what a woman is. We need to go out, fall down, get scars, pick ourselves up, change our minds, and most importantly we need to have our own heroic experiences, so we can grow just like anybody else!

We will all  know when men and the world have finally truly become enlightened when there are just as many popular stories about women reaching enlightenment or even couples transcending together. It may shock many people but couples who are truly in love, love beyond the physical body and have a love that is transcendent and beyond life, death or the changes of the material world. That is real enlightenment.


Candice Raquel Lee
Author of  The Innocent: A Love Story  

and Effed Up: An Abnormal Romance

I am a Cultural Chimera

This is a poem about being mixed-race in America.

I am a cultural chimera.

A bit monstrous to the plain folks with their similar parts all in a row.

I have a leg from Spain, 

an eye from Italy,

a tongue from India,

a hip from Greece, 

a heart that is Native American,

a laugh from Africa. 

My tail is quite Asian. 

My wings have a European flap. 

My neck is long like an African Giraffe. 

I speak like a sphinx.

She was my mentor before Oedipus’ twisted fate undid her. 

I can still see the confusion and fear on his face

before he took her life.

It is the same look one-way folk study me and my parts 

that flash, yet are dull, 

wet and yet dry, cultured and yet wild, 

deep and yet foolish in their eyes. 

They cannot make head or tail of me.

I am a mythic creature.

I really don’t exist.

I can’t.

Quite illogical. 

Why does she not fit into our definitions,

our boxes, 

our squares

with such pretty names like

white and black and red

or European, African and Asian?

Everything else goes but her. 

"You really must forgive me. I have tried, when I was smaller, to put my paw, excuse me, foot into your boxes, but oddly, it would not stay but leapt out and away quivering like it had padded, I mean, walked into acid. Your boxes are for you, and thank you so much for trying to share them with me, but you see, I just don’t fit."



Candice Raquel Lee
Author of  The Innocent: A Love Story  

and Effed Up: An Abnormal Romance

Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery? The Rachel Dolezal question

In the aftermath of Rachel Dolezal's controversial self-identification as black, the question has arisen of who can and should be called "black." I have been asking this for a long time now because of its relevance to me. I am a real mixed-race person like Ms.Dolezal had claimed to be, but unlike her, I have never been so sure of my racial designation. I am genetically and with documentation (yes, one does have to say that these days) part Native American, (Wampanoag, Cheyenne and more), African, European (French, Spanish, Irish, Scottish, English, German, and a few more) and Jewish. I consider myself tri-racial. In America, I am often considered black by both European and African-Americans without any thought to the rich complexity of American and world history that had to come about to create someone like me.

African, European and Native women who make up me.

Unlike Dolezal, who is, in her mind, black without even a nod to her "fictitious" mixed genetic inheritance (Native American and European), I have not been able to reject the other branches of my family tree so entirely. Maybe it is because she hates her parents and rejects them out of hand, or because she is white and has never known what it is like to be mixed-race or more importantly mixed-cultured, that she feels she can jump on the one-race bus with both feet. Maybe it is because she has never stood in a mirror like I have and wondered where she got those almond eyes or high cheekbones, or wondered who she laughs like or why her hair comes out of her head in s-shaped curls.

Dolezal, as a European American, knows her family history. She probably heard from her parents about her relatives that were Czech and German and why she has that funny nose and freckles.  I had to dig through silence, slavery, shame and Ancestry.com to find out why I looked the way I did. I had to take DNA tests to discover what part of Africa my family came from. I had to look through census after census until I found those that proved I had Wamponoag ancestors because supposedly no Native Americans and Africans ever got married and had kids together. I had to go through spitting in vials to find out I was Jewish on both sides of my family. I had to look through historical documents to find out I was part Scottish and German. I had to fight for years and pierce through a tragic family history, lies of my mother, secrets of her mother, and stories of my father's grandmother to find out who I was. So, I am not settling for just black like Ms. Dolezal can because she never had to struggle with identity and racism. She knew she was white and hated it or her parents. I don't have family stories to throw away or a family bible to burn that tells me who I am related to or where I came from. I didn't have the privilege of  turning my back on my past since it was a shut and locked door I had to take a crow-bar to just to open it and peek inside.

Musty old book that holds my rich  history.

Ms. Dolezal has her own psychological problems. She decided to solve them by changing race, becoming the fairest of them all, and ruling in the NAACP. She has said everything the NAACP hierarchy wanted to hear: "Though I am fair, I only identify as black. I don't care about that other parts of me," and she was rewarded with a high position. She told a lie that I as a real mixed-race person will not tell. She told a fairy-tale about race, color, and culture and made a simple and very neat choice. For me, a real person who is mixed-race (and my family has been for hundreds of years), it is not so simple. I do not go one way or another when it comes to race. I can't because all of that is who I am, and I feel lucky to know it. Neither I nor my family members have been rewarded for our differences. My uncle shaved off his straight hair and kept it short all his life so not to get his ass kicked for looking too white.  My father had to fight white and black boys who wanted to beat him up because he looked too much and too little like each race.  I have been called the "N" word by whites. I have experienced reverse racism from black people because they think since I am lighter-skinned,  I get more privileges, and they want to make sure I suffer like them (for all you who think that way, be contented, I have suffered, but thanks, it's made me stronger.)

The choice to accept all our colors and refuse to deny the truth about ourselves and history has led to us being ostracized, called liars, laughed at and ridiculed for not stating "I am black " but stating  "I am a person of many colors and cultures."  To be multi-racial is for me to be an outsider, always trying to find where I fit. In my life, I find at times I fit everywhere and nowhere. I am a cultural chimera.

My Chimera-self. Scared yet?

I would not be anything else. In fact, I refuse to be less than what I am to make anyone happy or make my life easier and more successful like Ms. Dolezal. If she wants to be mixed-race,  wants to be Native, African and European like me and wants to imitate me, then I will tell her what my history has taught me, grow a pair, and accept who she is really and be proud of that. I know I am.

Me and my German Valkyrie ancestresses!

Candice Raquel Lee
Author of  The Innocent: A Love Story  

and Effed Up: An Abnormal Romance