{"pk":58235,"title":"Mixed Speak","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This short piece addresses the challenges of being biracial and finding your own voice while listening to the conflicting voices of others: parents, grandparents, friends, mentors, teachers, coaches. I had two constraints while writing this: one, I had to emulate Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl,” where a mother teaches her daughter how to be a respectable girl and not “the slut you are so bent on becoming”; and two, I had to develop this for a high school literature assignment while studying remotely during New York’s pandemic lockdown. I had no “in-person” communication other than with my immediate family, which made it even harder to find one’s own voice: you need the voices of others in order to distinguish yours from theirs. I wondered: what is sound--music? vibrations? noise? everyday sounds? silence? Will silence always protect you?","language":"en","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0np7b5zg","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Moussa","middle_name":"","last_name":"Cisse Toni","name_suffix":"","institution":"The Institute for Collaborative Education","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2021-10-06T09:01:06-07:00","date_accepted":"2021-10-06T09:01:06-07:00","date_published":"2022-03-11T12:32:47-08:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/ucdavislibrary_streetnotes/article/58235/galley/44377/download/"}]}