This fall I was featured in this article in the Washington Post. Check out a few paragraphs and then click the link!
Why we’re considering home schooling our biracial son by Tracy Jan
The declaration came emphatically, out of nowhere — dropped between sudsing his hair and rinsing out the shampoo with a plastic yellow duck full of water. “I’m not black,” my then 4-year-old son announced, while playing with his superhero figurines in the tub.
I assured him that not only was he black, because his daddy is black, but that he was also Chinese, like me. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head at this reality check. I was just as confused — where was all this coming from?
“If you’re not black and you’re not Chinese, what are you?” I asked, hoping he would not say “white.”
“I’m just Langston,” he answered.
Just Langston. My husband, Gerald, and I were inspired to name our son in honor of Langston Hughes while having lunch at Busboys and Poets immediately after learning we were having a boy. The restaurant’s name honors Hughes, who had worked as a busboy in a Washington hotel before he became a famous poet and leader of the Harlem Renaissance.
We wanted our child to have a strong appreciation of his cultural roots, and a name that reflected his heritage and our hopes for him. To me, a reporter who now writes about race for The Washington Post, and Gerald, a former high school history teacher, the name Langston was perfect. That afternoon, we bought two anthologies of Langston Hughes’s poetry — one for adults, one for children — from the restaurant’s companion bookstore and grew giddy anticipating all we would teach him. Continue read here
