It's not the body that clocks me on heritage, unless I've stuck a pencil in my hair. It's the culture, and that's spread out across religion (voudoun), cuisine (I go into an African restaurant, I look for goat), literature ("A Negro Speaks of Rivers"), music (African drumming and X!osa lyrics) and so forth. And that's just one thread. There are threads of Cherokee and Lakota and Irish and Sumerian and so forth as well.

There are people who look mixed and are mixed. There are people who look brown and act white. There are people who look one way, but they're mixed too.

Heritage ... is what you make of it. I hold little pieces of the languages in me, that cradle the shape of my soul. English isn't enough for all of it, though it's the most mixed language in the world, but for maybe a few of the creoles. If you don't live a culture, it dies out. But as long as someone still holds a part of it, it lives. I have my parts, and other people have theirs, and that's how the world works.