Lawrence Hill

I was struck by Lawrence Hill— I am so glad that I was able to hear him speak. I have so much respect for him because he writes for a living, writes about subjects he has not experienced himself, and most of all, he was able to clarify ideas that I have heard before, but never understood.

Lawrence Hill addressed the idea of being the other—he spoke about how his daughters read one book in school about the struggle with race. They read this book four times. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great literary work, but it should by no means be the only book a person reads about race. He spoke about how he was raised in a mostly Caucasian neighborhood, and how hard it was to define himself growing up. Even though he could have called himself “mixed”, other people did not see him that way. He was forced to define himself as “black”, even though his mother is white.

The forced definition made me think of those bubbles people are forced to fill in during exams, I never really thought much about filling in a bubble to state the color of a person’s skin, until he pointed out that if he were to fill in a bubble, he would have denied half of his heritage. Because of the color of his skin, he is forced to claim that he is black. If he wanted to side with his mother’s side of the family tree, he would not be able to, because other people would refuse to believe that he is something different than the color of his skin.