True Colors

Blue Boy is a great book about a funny kid who doesn't fit in. Written by Princeton grad book editor and sometime cabaret singer Rakesh Satyal, it depicts the challenges of an Indian boy growing up in the suburbs of Cincinnati. The main character, Kiran, is a bright young boy who always gets it wrong. His attempts at great art and theatrical flair always fall flat, reminding him that he is not quite of the world that he inhabits. The title refers not to an eighteenth-century English portrait of a young gentleman, but rather the mission of Kiran to make good on the lie he made to his mother who catches him in the master bath covering his face with her lipstick, mascara and eyeliner. When confronted by his mom, who "has four terms to describe the looks of young Indian girls: "ugly," "passable" "presentable," and "That is the type of girl you vant to marry, Kiran." he says that he was making himself up as the Hindu deity Krishna, who is usually depicted with blue skin. The book follows young Kiran through his hostile, mostly white school, his forays into the (for him) equally uncomfortable Indian community in Cincinnati, and through the daily routines at home with his stern and distant accountant father and his spendthrift, loving mother. Preparations for the school's talent competition and Kiran's plan to appear as Krishna provide the narrative thread that ties the central part of the book together.

This morning I read a few pages of the book before heading off to work, a relaxing moment before the hustle and bustle of my daily life. Out the door and up the street, I saw my morning bus pull away from the stop as I prepared to cross The Boulevard. Damn, the number 10 bus that I take to Journal Square is erratic, it's often a long wait, then three buses pull up all at once. Whew, today I am lucky, the one I missed is the first in a convoy. Another quickly pulls up and I hop on. After paying my $1.45, I grab a seat, settle in and open Blue Boy to continue reading. Before I get too absorbed in the book, my eye wanders. Across from me is a South Asian woman with her distinctive Indian attire. By chance it is blue. In the other direction is a young Filipino woman, beside her is a Latino kid. An African-American mother and daughter are further back. Once I do a full scan of the bus, I realize that I am the only white person on board. The tables have turned, and now I can imagine a bit of what young Kiran feels in his white Ohio school when he doesn't look like his peers and he doesn't fit in. Of course it's not that simple. In this society whites have privileges, whiteness has power.

I lived in the West Village of Manhattan for over twenty-five years. At one time the neighborhood was gritty and bohemian. The process of renewal and gentrification has transformed it to an expensive, upper middle class, mostly white neighborhood. Each wave of big bucks and house renovation in the neighborhood removed some of the grit and a lot of the life of the area. Multi-tenant buildings have become grand single family houses. Instead of stoop parties and street fairs, drawn shades and the hush of limousines mark street life in my old haunt. The move to Jersey City was a BIG transition for me, out of the city, across the river, into the wilds of Jersey. Once I overcame my fear of change I began to embrace the idea and the fact of my new home. Rich and I are a mixed race couple, he's Filipino and I am a white Canadian, though we are both American citizens, he by birth, I by choice. Among its other assets, the multi-racial tapestry of Jersey City appealed to us. The mix on our street is like the mix on my number 10 bus this morning, and it's engaging and interesting and reassuring to me. Our little hybrid family is going to fit in here. Jersey City is home to a huge variety of races and ethnicities, making it one of the most diverse cities in the United States.

In this life I have come a long way. I grew up in Montreal, in the English part of an overwhelmingly French city. In that context, white privilege was English privilege. One of the French-Canadian separatists of the late 1960s, called his powerful book about the French-Canadian experience in Quebec, White Niggers of America. The French-Canadians were tired of the way we Anglos controlled business in the province. As English-speaking kids, we kept apart, as Protestants, we went to different schools from our Catholic neighbors. We learned French but we never spoke it to the French-Canadians who lived and worked all around us. Things came to a boil in the mid- to late '60s. Those were trying times in Quebec, I remember standing in the playground when our school was evacuated because of a bomb threat. As we stood there in taut rows of nervous kids on a warm spring day, we all shuddered when the bomb went off, blowing up a mail box just a few streets away and maiming the policeman who was trying to defuse the bomb that had been inside the box.

Times and place have changed me. Back in the 1950s or early '60s I remember that the sister of a friend was getting married. She belonged to the United Church of Canada and her husband-to-be was Anglican. At the time I wondered, how would this work, how would they fit together, how would these different kinds of people form a family? That long ago concern seems bizarre and rather quaint to me now when I celebrate the differences that surround me and that define my own relationship and household. These days I am engaged and stimulated by this diversity. I hope that I am showing my true colors.

By the way, I haven't finished Blue Boy yet, but I have a sinking feeling that Kiran's performance as Krishna at the talent show isn't going to go well. Read the book for yourself and you'll find out what happens. I think you'll enjoy it, Rakesh Satyal is a good writer.