passing

Passing. A new performance and installation piece by Curtis Walker and Lisa Wells is looking for collaborators and stories. We are interested in exploring the many ways that we pass in the world. Sometimes passing is a personal choice. Sometimes passing is projected upon us. In either case it leaves us feeling ‘queer’ -- different, outsider, other. Passing is that moment when people perceive us to be someone different than we believe ourselves to be. We all pass at different times and places in our lives.

I pass for white all the time. I pass for white unless I choose to tell you otherwise. I am a mixed race person. I was raised in a mixed race household. I choose to identify as Mexican because the models of white I experienced were abusive and oppressive. My father called my mother a ‘wetback.’ I preferred to be the wetback to the abuser.

But what the hell does it mean to choose to be Mexican? I wasn’t raised in a Mexican neighborhood and I certainly didn’t identify with the chollos from the barrio. Our neighbors were white. I played with white kids and I learned the rules of their games. We ate beans and tortillas for dinner. We occasionally celebrated Las Posadas and we made tamales at my Aunt Phil’s for Christmas. A tiny amount of Spanish was mixed into our vocabulary, mocos instead of snot is the one I remember most clearly.

What does race mean? Is it food and vocabulary? Is it the rules to a child's game? Is it the color of our skin? What does your race mean to you?