MONOLOG

From The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor:

“My grandmother,” Mrs. Browne began slowly in a whisper, “was a full-blooded Iroquois, and my grandmother a free black from a long line of journeymen who had lived in Connecticut since the establishment of the colonies. And my father was a Bajan who came to this country as a cabin boy on a merchant mariner.”

“I know all that,” Kiswana said trying to keep her lip from trembling.

“Then, know this. I am alive because of the blood of proud people who never scraped or begged or apologized for what they were. They lived asking only one thing of this world—to be allowed to be. And I learned through the blood of these people that black isn’t beautiful and it isn’t ugly—black is! It’s not kinky hair and it’s not straight hair—it just is.”

“It broke my heart when you changed your name. I gave you my grandmother’s name, a woman who bore nine children and educated them all, who held off six white men with a shotgun when they tried to drag one of her sons to jail for ‘not knowing his place.’ Yet you needed to reach into an African dictionary to find a name to make you proud.”

“When I brought my babies home from the hospital, my ebony son and my golden daughter, I swore before whatever gods would listen—those of my mother’s people or those of my father’s people—that I would use everything I had and could ever get to see that my children were prepared to meet the world on its own terms, so that no one could sell them short or make them ashamed of what they were or how they looked—whatever they were or however they looked. And Melanie, that’s not being white or red or black—that’s being a mother."