As Far As I Know

by Angel Hogan

This article originally appeared in RQ Vol. 1 // Issue Two: MONSTERS, Fall 2019. Purchase a copy and subscribe to the magazine here.

Writer Angel Hogan has selected Decarcerate PA (as part of their efforts in joining National Mama’s Bail Out Day) to receive a portion of single issue sales of the magazine in which this story first appeared. Root Quarterly will donate 20% of the proceeds from the copies of Vol. 1 // Issue Two: MONSTERS that sell between August 14, 2020 and October 31, 2020.

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome

Derek Walcott, Love After Love

The unusual habit arose at age five. Whenever I had a few moments alone, usually in the bathroom, I would climb from toilet to sink and gaze at myself in the mirror. I would look and look: my brown skin and freckles, my own dark eyes. Skinny limbs and frizzy curls. While there is nothing unusual in a child clamoring up to the mirror, my stare was accompanied by an odd little chant.

You are Angel Hogan, and you are alive on this earth.

I have no idea how it began. I think it was organic, the words just easing into my mind. I did this regularly for many years. While repeating the phrase and staring at my image, slowly there was a… shift in my consciousness. And here is where things got interesting. I would no longer see a reflection of myself. Looking back at me was a child, brown, freckled, frizzy, and kind-eyed. It was me, but in this self-induced trance, I was somehow larger than flesh parked on the porcelain. It was peaceful. There was a wide sense of a self as part of the air, a part of everything. I saw myself as a bit of a stranger. It was wondrous.

Sadly I lost this gift around age eleven, though it remains a defining part of my sense of identity and self.

As a multiracial adoptee, identity is often on my mind. It’s a rare occasion when I’m not thinking about it in some sense or another. Though much less acceptable now, seldom would a day pass when someone was not asking me some variation of, “What are you?” Where are you from? Where is your family from? What are you mixed with?

While vacationing with my mom in Florida one year, a woman next to me, poolside, asked where I was from. I said, “Pennsylvania.” She asked if I was born there. I said, “Yes.” She asked where my parents were from. I said, “Pennsylvania.” Grandparents? “PA,” I said. Finally, she could not contain herself any longer and blurted out, “Are you Mexican?”

I turned from her to my mom, floating in the sun at the far end of the pool. I yelled across the crowd.

“Ma?”

“Yes?” she didn’t even lift her head. She knew what was happening. We’d been through it dozens of times.

“As far as we know, am I Mexican?” I raised my voice a bit more. Everyone turned and the woman beside me flushed.

“Not as far as we know,” she called across the pool. She kept her eyes closed. I turned back to the now deeply flustered woman.

“Not as far as I know,” I told her.

To be clear, I am not whining. I find the subject interesting as well. Except when questions are raised with malice, I don’t mind. In fact, I’m curious, too. Not just about my own identity, but how we think about who we are, and the decisions we make when presenting ourselves to the world. Yet, when asked directly in my younger days, I had no real answer. Sometimes I’d do my best to cobble together a truth. Sometimes I’d make it up. I identified solely as black most of my life. Raised in a white family and community, I thought I was the brownest girl who lived. I had no idea that I was scarcely shades darker than my peach-toned little friends. Moving to downtown Philadelphia in my late teens, being called white girl was shocking beyond all imagination. After years of having my curls called “S.O.S.” and “Brillo,” overnight my hair was good. What a circus.

In what ways does this affect my identity? Who gets to decide?

Over four years ago, I purchased a DNA test. When these kits first came into public awareness, they were expensive and it was rare for the average person to get ahold of one. Slowly, they became more accessible. Though still a bit steep at $99, when I got my hands on a kit, the price seemed worth it. Once I received the package I couldn’t wait to rip it open and send it back to find out the results.

Why does this matter? Though all family ancestry may be compelling in some way, my story includes a twist. Adopted as a younger child, I have no real idea of my genetic background. While I identify as black, it is generally assumed that I am likely “multiracial,” though what that “multi” includes is a mystery. This is true of one of my brothers as well—we are both adopted, brown-skinned, and have often talked of how this experience shapes the ways we move (and don’t move) in the world. My family is almost entirely white, and biologically connected. Several of my relatives have taken ancestry tests and found few real surprises, as they knew most of the story handed down from our grandparents. Though we are deeply connected by love and kinship, we share no genes and so my story begins a new, singular branch of the family tree.

Unlike the adoptions of recent years that are often open and allow the adoptees to know their genetic background, if not their biological relatives, this information was not available to many of us adopted before the 1990s—until the advent of consumer DNA tests. These tests have the potential to unlock exhilarating, illuminating doors for folks like me, with little or no understanding of our genetic background. The knowledge may also be unsettling: What if you find you are not who you thought you were?

In the days that followed receiving my kit, unexpected trepidation came over me. I sat the box on my mantle to consider for a while. Days ran into weeks, then years, as I grappled uncertainty. What information did that tiny box hold that I didn’t already know for myself? Why was taking the test important?

When I shared my hesitation with my mom, her response was solid.

“I wouldn’t take one of those tests,” she said. “Never.”

Of course, I countered. She knows her background; my Grandpop traced the family line back generations. Of course, the idea of a genetic test is not as alluring to someone who already knows what it will reveal.

However, my mom’s greater focus was concern. Powerful corporations could have access to my genetic information, without my consent as to how it would be used. She reminded me of recent arrests made by using test data as evidence.

“Have you thought about this?”

Truth be told, I had not thought deeply about it. My mom’s concerns were valid, and warranted consideration. Indeed, in talking with another multiracial adoptee who took a DNA test, we both acknowledged fears of information being used maliciously, particularly for black folks. After a lifetime of watching my older dark-skinned brother dogged by a justice system that does not view him as an entire human being, there are concerns about supporting structures that may make this abuse easier. While the tests may shine light, exactly how this most private of information is exploited is masked in mystery.

Meanwhile, the pull of uncovering the unknown plagued me, as did the box of my genetic kit, still in plastic on my hutch. So, while suggesting a film idea as part of the 5 Shorts Project, I proposed to finally document the experience of processing and getting the results of a DNA/ancestry test. After considering dropping the project altogether, I instead made a moving piece about the friend mentioned above, also multiracial and adopted. We chronicle his challenging journey of self-discovery, and how a DNA kit revealed missing pieces of his past while connecting him to his birth family. Even while I remained hesitant to take the test, I understood an adoptee’s desire to know more. I am also passionate about telling our stories—the stories of black and brown folks who may not have genetic connections, and how each of us chooses to address this. How this experience affects the way we engage with identity, and how we choose to take space. The stories of families made not by blood, but by law and by love.

As for that DNA test I bought over four years ago, the package remains, unopened, in my living room.

As an artist, one of the things I find most powerful about sharing our experiences, though sometimes difficult, is how they often serve as a way to build community and greater understanding. Storytelling allows us to say the difficult things, to look life in the face and see our own strange, loving eyes looking back. I believe this particular brand of empathy is especially urgent now, during a time when so many are divided afresh by current politics and horrors. I believe in the power of our stories.

Why did I choose to tell a friend’s story instead of my own? I realized that I simply did not need to know whatever it was the test revealed. In the end, it says little about who I am.

A few weeks into my project planning for the documentary, that image of the tiny brown girl in the mirror visited me. A little girl who had a strong vision of herself already in place. Identity, long before the world came clamoring in with its ideas and demands.

I was reminded of a sunny day on Walnut Street. Walking westward, on a leisurely afternoon, my mind was alive with thoughts for a new poem. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bright-eyed, beautiful friend popped up directly in front of me. I couldn’t quite place who she was, but I was so glad to see her! Her wild, frizzy curls swept up in the air by the wind, she looked on the verge of telling a joke. I raised my arm and smiled in greeting, to find that she raised her arm at that precise second, smiling exactly as I did.

Someone had flung open a shop door. In a perfect, once-in-a-lifetime miraculous moment, the sun hit the glass and created a surprise mirror. The beautiful friend I couldn’t wait to greet? She was me.

How wondrous to find yourself in the middle of a crowded city, each smiling at the other’s welcome.

This article originally appeared in RQ Vol. 1 // Issue Two: MONSTERS, Fall 2019. Purchase a copy and subscribe to the magazine here.

Angel Hogan is RQ’s fiction editor. She has performed as part of the Black Women’s Arts Festival, Literary Death Match, Moonstone Presents, First Person Arts and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She has worked with ArtWell, was a Contributing Editor to Philadelphia Stories, and a review panelist for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. As a teaching artist, Angel is most interested in initiatives that use storytelling as a vehicle for tolerance, peace, and community building. Her first film, By Law, By Love, was completed in March of 2019. See more at: www.angelhogan.com

Andrea “Philly” Walls makes art across genres to uplift stories that move her. She is grateful to the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Leeway Foundation, the Hedgebrook Community for Women Authoring Change, and the Women’s Mobile Museum for their ongoing support and sustenance. She is pleased that her poetry and visual art have found homes in publications she admires, including this one. She is the creator and curator of thedarchive.com and theblackbodycurve.com.

Writer Angel Hogan has selected Decarcerate PA (as part of their efforts in joining National Mama’s Bail Out Day) to receive a portion of single issue sales of the magazine in which this story first appeared. Root Quarterly will donate 20% of the proceeds from the copies of Vol. 1 // Issue Two: MONSTERS that sell between August 14, 2020 and October 31, 2020.