Snow spreads smooth across this high flat mesa, a sea of marshmallow cream.

Hues shift from purple to indigo, ripples across ice-crisp blue.

Melted butter warms seeps from sky to land.

Delicious.

I am not a Stereotype.

Do not perceive a writer as stereotype, and never the audience as stereotype.

I am a white woman, growing old.  My socio-economic label would be middle-class American.

Do not see me as a stereotype.

Non-native, what does that mean?  White American?

Me? I’m a second generation American. 

My father’s parents were Czech – too plump to be white Americans.  And too poor. My grandfather sailed to Ellis Island as a 14-year old orphan with no coins jangling in his pocket, only an address of a relative who lived in Iowa.  He didn’t speak English.  His son, my father, gained access into society through basketball and a college education.

My  mother’s father was Italian, too dark to be a white American.   At least we lived in the Midwest where Italians were not put in “safe quarters” during WWII as they were on the East Coast.  By working in coal mines, my grandfather saved to buy land, to become a farmer.  His story and my grandmother’s is the story of the American dream.  The coal dust coated his lungs and eventually killed him.  His father came to this country to avoid conscription into the Italian army.  He had already marched the long walk from Russia back to the northern mountains of Italy after Napoleon had deserted his troops in Russia during the darkness of defeat and winter.  Northern Italy had been ruled by France at the time.  One country taking another.

Dispossessed.  Displaced. Their tribal lands,  Bohemia, their home lands were confiscated by the Communists.  Family was imprisoned.

As an author I write about the people of the western Pacific, the Navajo of the southwest. What is my interest in Native Americans?

Maybe the attraction, the common thread – another people who have been dispossessed.

My language was taken away.  Laughed at if I spoke it in school.  As  a teenager, I wanted to be a stereotype.  When I opened my lunch sack (not a bucket like the other white kids) I wanted to have a peanut butter sandwich, just like theirs, even though I hated peanut butter sandwiches.  My sandwich was liverwurst.  Stinky.

Don’t see me as a stereotype. 

Our youngest daughter grew up on Saipan, as a minority, as a disliked minority.  No one should have to grow up with prejudice and discrimination.  Like all the research shows, it is not healthy.  Her first year back in the States was difficult.  She was seen as a white kid, but she wasn’t. She didn’t wear the right clothes, didn’t know the popular bands, hadn’t seen the current movies.  She spoke English but she used weird phrases and strange words.

I traveled with a close friend who is gay.  We were spending Christmas break taking our daughters to one of the national parks.  To be treated as a stereotype.  Once we were checking in to a hotel at a national park, sneer – I heard myself say a little too loud, my husband would be traveling with me but he has to work.  I was appalled and ashamed and enraged.  It hurts to be a stereotype.  It hurts to see my friend treated as one, rather than as an individual, a teacher of the Deaf, a dedicated mom, a creator of Parents’ Groups that Advocate for the Rights of Children who are Deaf, a woman dying of cancer. 

I am a non-gay, a non-Native, a non-deaf.

I am a nobody, a non-stereotype.

Who are you?  A non-stereotype too?

 Perhaps stereotypes will become extinct.

My website, with more information about me and what I’m doing, and pages for each of my books.

The writer crosses over many lines or boundaries.  This site is a place for discussion about the many ways we cross over, and the books that lead us on these journeys.

We cross over…

Sometimes to another consciousness, into the hearts and minds of our characters. 

Sometimes into another culture, a Navajo reservation or a first grade classroom. 

Sometimes looking through a window of time at a culture that is far away or gone forever.

We cross boundaries marked “do not enter” and try to give voice to children whose voices are silenced because of fear or oppression.  We cross boundaries into places we have not been – into the heart of an autistic child, a deaf child, a homeless child.  A child whose mother has cancer, whose sister has been deployed to Iraq, whose father is gay. We cross boundaries to celebrate the magnificence and majesty, the mystery of the human journey.  With respect, with humiliation, with a passion to share story, to increase tolerance and understanding, we cross over.

This is a place to discuss and celebrate crossing over.  Feel free to enter the dialogue.  Each week look for a new brief essay.