Living on the borderline: how I embraced my mixed-race status after years of denialPosted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2017-08-26 18:38Z by Steven |
Living on the borderline: how I embraced my mixed-race status after years of denial
The Guardian
2017-08-26
 Solomon Glave as Heathcliff in Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights Photograph: Artificial Eye |
I still have yet to uncover the full truth behind my heritage, but now feel that living in a racial no man’s land can actually be fun
Wuthering Heights has been one of my favourite books since I studied it for A-level seven years ago. I was fascinated by the tumultuous (and oddly asexual) relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, but mostly with the theme of liminality that runs through the book, and many other works of gothic literature. Liminality refers to something – or someone – that sits on the boundary between two things; it’s a middle ground between polar opposites. Kind of like being mixed race.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but I identified with Heathcliff (he’s a dark-skinned Gypsy anti-hero) because I have been straddling the borders of race liminality my whole life. Growing up brown-skinned in a white family and facing questions as to why that was, I have had to navigate many different racial identities depending on who I was with, never quite owning one…
Read the entire article here.