11 janeiro, 2011

Are you open?

Just finished two extraordinaries books "The Help" Kathryn Stockett and "Shanghai girls" Lisa See.
Both about discrimination and injustice and how women fight back, never giving up their dreams and their ability to give no matter what.
We are transported back in the sixties, Mississipi, how black women cooked, cleaned and raised little white children and have their own private toilets because of the diseases they might carry for example or others discriminations each one worse than the others.
"Shanghai girls" is the beautiful story of two sisters back in the sixties too, who after their father lost his fortune were sold and went living in chinatown Los Angeles and couldn't get out of it no matter what.
I am fortunate to have been raised by a french mother and a portuguese father both open to the world. I remember the parties in our house where my father was at the time responsible for black and arab countries. I remember mom wearing the traditional boubou offered to her by the Senegal's ambassador. I knew from childhood that we are equals in rights. In reading those powerful books i tried to imagine what would have been my reactions in those terrible years. Would i have been brave? Would i have been coward? I realize that the ultimate gift my parents offered me are the openess and the tolerance.
I am at home anywhere in the world in a rich or in a poor house i will adapt and be thankful for it.





There is still i believe much to be done towards tolerance, information or most of the times the lack of it is the main responsible for all the fears towards the "ones that are supposedly different".
Hope you like my new "memories" album...
Have a good week
Xo