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Mary M. Chapman
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48226 |
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Member Local Time |
January 05, 2009 11:31 PM |
Last Visit |
June 03, 2008 12:55 PM |
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April 23, 2008 07:52 AM |
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Mary Chapman
I am a love child. After too many years of repression I am now dealing with that. My birth father was some white dude. I don't even know his name. Then there is mom. She was adopted. You know how you hear things? Well, she has always believed that her bio mom ditched her because having a baby by a vaguely Latino dude in 1936 Delaware was just not happening. I have summoned the courage to try to learn the truth, for her, and yes, for me.
I am black (although I am trying on Obama's self-description: A black person of mixed heritage). I was raised black. My wonderful father, the only dad I've known, was a black man. I love my black people, although I have not always gotten a lot of love back (imagine being 19, in college, blithely hoping to hear a well-known Pan-African leader speak before my next class. What did I get? A german shepard sicced on my high-yellow ass).
I have also always been an accidental spy. See, I know how some white folks talk around the dinner table. And I mean regular white folks. Kind of freaks you out when the nice, white co-worker tells you he doesn't like his new 'hood because "it's getting kind of dark." Charming fellow. He just had no idea. Or the amiable white cabbie who beseeches a black pedestrian to "get your black ass outta the way," with mortified me in the back seat.
When you're "mixed" you realize how silly all this race stuff is. But it ain't boring. That's for shizzle.
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Mary Chapman grew up in the former home of boxer Joe Louis’s manager, and learned to love good writing in the library he left there. After graduating with a journalism degree from Wayne State University, Chapman worked for several years as an editor for United Press International Detroit, and spent nearly a decade reporting on business and labor unions for Washington, D.C.-based publisher Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., covering several rounds of national contract talks between the United Auto Workers union and the Detroit automakers.
An award-winning poet, Mary has a writing credit for the 2001 International Showtime feature film “Rain.” She has also won a Society of Professional Journalists award for outstanding reporting. These days Chapman is in business for herself, and still can buy great wine when the spirit doth move. She is currently writing a book about the nanny who helped raise her. Her work regularly appears in The New York Times and Newsweek. She also has written for the Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, Black Enterprise, Savoy Magazine, AutoWeek, Agence-France Presse, Crain’s Automotive Marketer, People Magazine, MSN.com and BET.com, among others. Chapman has also discussed the automotive industry on National Public Radio.
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