About This BlogSince my independent study with Dr. Eddy Alvarez at SUNY Oneonta ended with my final semester, I will be using this blog as both a personal journal and a platform through which I can voice my opinions on current issues, be it the 2016 election, feminism, pop culture, or anything in between.
This blog is still a work in progress. As a new graduate student in Magazine, Newspaper, and Online Journalism at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, I hope to continue to explore the intricacies of race as I write about things that interest me, even though my independent study, which focused on passing, has come to an end. I hope to find connections between my interests in politics and pop culture, and perhaps this blog will help me come to understand intersectionality at an even deeper level. Here is my original description of the blog--though things are changing, these words will always be pertinent when it comes to my writing: The concept of passing in the African American community has always been of incredible interest to me for numerous reasons, the most important being that, as a very fair-skinned African American woman myself, I constantly find that I am passing in a world that would much rather believe that I am white instead of believing that I am black. Since I was a very young girl, my racial identity has been mocked, laughed at, and often times rejected by my white peers. While this blatant disregard for an integral part of my identity could have lead to my own ignorance of my blackness, or perhaps even my shame, I am only empowered by it; it also helps that I come from a very proud, occasionally radical African American matriarchy. When I learned that there were other successful African Americans who were not defined by the darkness of their skin, and that those people were writers who helped to shape the literary world for black folk, I was inspired. I knew that I wanted to study and emulate the strength and intellect of the likes of Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen, two famous writers of the Harlem Renaissance. I want to understand why, in a culture so diverse, so oppressed, and so communicable, there is such a prevalence of intercultural racism. Through writing, whether it be my own or the writing of those more successful than I, I hope to gain a better understanding of what “blackness” truly is, and perhaps begin to comprehend why it is so integral in our society to label ourselves with something that is merely a social construct—race. |
About Me |
My name is Sarah Heikkinen, and I am a graduate of the State University of New York at Oneonta. I graduated with a B. A. in English, along with a minor in Africana & Latino Studies, in December of 2015.
As a woman of both Caucasian and African American descent, I have often found myself impassioned about literature and news items pertaining to the strained racial relations that have been pulling at the seams of America for centuries. My passion for the written word and for social justice has propelled me towards a career in writing, with a great interest in journalism and publishing. |