WHITE

Koko Brown

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786823854
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro britannico

What are you when you are always the other? A play about identity, being a mixed-race black woman and always feeling like an outsider. Blending music and spoken word, WHITE considers the concept of mixed-race privilege, tries to connect clashing cultures and explores what it means to be mixed in contemporary Britain.

WADING

DROWNING

I always knew what I was. I was female…aged twenty-two.

Into mic.

‘Who’s your friend over there?

The black girl, with the short hair.’

Where?

Me?

Nah, can’t be because I’m mixed.

I’m as much white as I am black!

I wish I could take that back.

She creates the opening loop to THE VALLEY – this is slow-paced but steady with slightly haunting undertones.

Walk through the valley of the ones you love

Push through the water it is made of blood

She creates distance between herself and the audience. This is an internal conflict which is only made external to help her find answers.

A lot of my journey was questioning

Questioning who I was and why and how I identify.

Why being mixed race made me so proud.

Why being labelled as ‘black’ was such a bad thing.

Why I wore my anti-blackness like a badge of honour.

My narrative has always been anti-black.

Looking back I wonder if my dad has something to do with that?

Is the absence of dad equal to the absence of black?

I wonder if being drowned in whiteness,

Gasping for the smallest piece of black culture,

Grasping at the smallest pieces of that culture,

Just to feel like I belonged to that culture,

Always feeling rejected by that culture,

Was that the base of my ‘preference’?

Somehow proud to say that I’d never date a black boy for no reason other than the fact he was a black boy.

Preference can become a fetish when you’re the oppressor. But what about when you use that preference to suppress?

What then?

Does my lack of knowledge for that culture allow me to oppress that culture?

And how did I have the audacity to say it

out loud,

to

spread

it

around?

Infecting the atmosphere where I stood so proud.

I move forward knowing that I have changed.

Though I still carry shame.

She records a simple melody, as if she’s coaxing an answer from thin air, then layers another, somewhat pained, melody on top.

Walk through the valley of the ones you love

Push through the water it is made of blood

Our narrative has always been anti-black.

drowning your next of kin in the pool of social media hashtags, of skin lightening.

Photoshopping the way we see beauty.

Looking through their bifocal lense,

short-sighted,

close-minded.

Obviously,

this is not the way that things should be but then why,

why,

did I feel the need to hide from the sun?

Staying in the shade is no fun.

Saying, ‘I don’t wanna get a tan’, ‘I don’t wanna get too dark.’

Then what does that mean for my naturally dark-skinned friends?

Does that mean I subconsciously shed shame on them?

They set milestones and surpass them in one fell swoop.

So what does it mean for those friends, when I protest to letting in the Vitamin D because I believed that getting dark wasn’t for me?

I look back at that version of myself ashamed. I move forward knowing that I have changed.

(Sings.)

Walk through the valley of the ones you love

Push through the water it is made of blood

The water is not too deep

You will not drown

As long as you chose to keep

Your head above the ground

Walk through the valley of the ones you love

Push through the water it is made of blood

She silences the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tracklist
• Inhaling
• Spiralling
• Landing
• Exploring
• Confronting
• Submerging
• Drowning
• Wading
• Emerging
• Exhaling
• About the Author