blackgirl on mars: notes on a life in copenhagen (or how my alienation brings me closer to people).

Anonymous said... Hi, I absolutely love your blog! I just came across it yesterday while searching about living as American in Denmark. I am curious to know if danish men are attracted to black women (primarly american/west indian). What is your experience with them? Is there alot of interracial marriages/dating with black women and white men? Sorry for putting you on the spot. Im just curious :)!!!

Sitting at a cafe in Amager I wonder at all the passing people... A woman leaves her child, outside, asleep, in a pram alongside a row of parked bikes. A pock-faced man with the sour smell of street strolls in and stares. He soon leaves. Two adolescent girls a red hoodie tied around not-yet-fully developed hips, their smell: still pink and signals a youth I no longer miss... Clouds sail through the sunny sky shading all the shine. Windbreakers are unleashed the solar retreat inevitable and I sit here anchored in Amager & brace myself for the winter...

He’s from Harlem, she’s from Brooklyn. He said he loved her and that he’d take her away, sometime, that summer. “I’m thinkin a house, beach. Jus’ you and me.” She can’t even respond. The magic he speaks lulls her to believe. He continues: Sometimes I feel you the only person I could talk to. She smiles a smile that contains within it all her heart. Many said that he didn’t do much, but they were wrong. Neighbors saw him, day after day comin and goin from his mama’s house. Handsome boy. But what does he do? Shame, he should be helping his mama. They said he didn’t do much, but they were wrong. He was a poet. He took words and hung them up in the air like multi-colored christmas lights. His words fell upon ears like candy-hued confetti. He was the poet of El Barrio & even if his neighbors didn’t understand that, he did. He was the poet of El Barrio. Inching close to thirty and still living at his mama’s house. But since when that a crime anyway? He looked neat (most of...

Hello, Sorry to bug you, but I was wondering if you have some time to respond to some questions i have about Denmark. I have been hopping over to your blog now and again since last year, but I seriously started to read your archive entries since I made the decision recently to try to move to Denmark. I am thinking about applying for the Danish Green Card and based on points I have a very good chance. I had done a lot of reading about DK before, but now that I am seriously considering the country for a move, things I didn't focus on before are really jumping out at me. One of your blog posts was especially interesting: Blackgirls on Istedgade I was shocked to see how recent the post was written. 2006! Therefore, this question may seem silly since it's only been 3 years (or less): Is the situation the same in Denmark? As someone coming over, is cleaning what one can expect to be doing for a good chunk of the early years, just to get by? Are the options to use one's educa...

Whenever Denmark features in the news, it rarely ever seems to be positive. With a xenophobic fear gripping even the most level-headed, instances of gross racism are rampant. While there is a collective callousness to non-Western traditions, I must take a moment to witness the hope. I'm not going to regurgitate all the many mess-ups Denmark can be blamed for--especially in its treatment towards its Islamic community. I'm not going to point my finger and talk about the lazy politics that take place here, where Muslims are the scapegoats in very much the same way many other minorities around the world have, and continue to be treated. What I am going to say is, is that my place of work is the coolest. My place of work, I get to witness miracles. Yesterday morning when I biked into our courtyard, I noticed a very beautiful girl, from what I thought was our 9th grade class. I always see her around and this morning, I was determined to tell her how beautiful I thought her to be. Som...

Yesterday, with the help of an amazing team of talented people, the first part of the Blackgirl on Mars photoshoot was completed...for those who know me well, I actually hate taking pictures. I feel uncomfortable in front of the camera: but as in all else, it's a matter of practice and by the end of a two hour shoot yesterday, I think I started to get the hang of it. The plan is to have a show up and running by Spring. We all know what deadlines are though...the stuff that makes the Universe laugh. But the idea of this show came to me years ago...and ever since I've been using each performance as a testing ground as to how I will put this multi-media production together. I've often found that as soon as I say I am about to do something, gifts appear. One such gift is L--a fellow New Yorker with whom I feel a kinship: creatively and spiritually. L has agreed, much to my joy, to direct this production. There is much happening, sometimes too much, but I must hang in there, tak...

So, I bought a new bike this Summer and am experiencing Copenhagen on a proper bike. Whoaw. I bought the bike after realizing that the only way I can keep from certain insanity is through movement...thus the bike. On my way home from work today, I took a route I used to take about seven years ago, and it really struck me how little things change in this city. I biked from the somewhat orderly street of Gammel Kongevej, through Vesterbro, to the more disorderly Istedgade, which is still seedy and creepy, past DGI Byen, which is this humungous sports center, past the Central Train Station, along Tivoli, through the Danish House of Parliament, to Christianshavn. So little has changed in the ten years I have been here. Someone once said to me, after returning after seven years, "The only thing that's changed is the metro and the price of beer." Sure, Tivoli has a few new, high rides. Sure some of the roads have even been renovated, and it seems as though something is happenin...

Hi Bandit Girl, It's been a busy summer here. Lots of people coming and going, which I like. Rereading your wonderful blog - fantastic photos of your child and your parents and grand-parents. Your picnic in the park looks a real treat. I was remembering the Copenhagen of long ago, there were very few black people there, but the music was always good (is it the Palace Hotel where musicians used to gather and sit at a big round table?) There were lots of Jazz clubs in those days and I always found the Danes to be 'good movers' . There were still American air bases in Denmark and the Danish girls who dated black Americans, spoke like black Americans. The coffee was always fresh and the people always friendly. I always came with a ticket to visit Sweden, but the people in my hotel always talked me out of going, it wasn't until I moved to Britain that I visited Sweden. One of my dreams at that time was to live in Europe and find all the black people who lived in countries...

Once an old friend of mine said to me, "You don't like Jazz music because you can't stay in the moment." I knew he was right, but there was also something else to it: I am the daughter of a Jazz musician, and I guess the simplest way for me to rebel was through disliking the very music I grew up with. Unlike many of the other kids I knew (or so I thought)my musical repertoire was full of slick cats and mesmerizing music that would define everything I have now come to identify as my childhood. Well, slowly but surely I grew out of my self-imposed rebellion. Funnily enough, it was through Etta James who I discovered in my early 20s. Suddenly, I had something to talk to my father about and my weekly visits with him became something I actually looked forward to, as he would give me free reign through his by then diminished album collection. I got Miles, I got Ayers, I got Stevie...musical gems made even more valuable by the fact that they once belonged to my Daddy... I g...

Life goes a lot faster than I can write...and even though I said I would be on vacation til the 14th, well, I just can't keep myself away. I think it is official: this has been one of the best summers I have experienced in a long time, and I didn't even leave the country! First was the great move: moving from one part of Copenhagen, a pretty posh side to a more working class neighborhood. I do miss my old apartment and neighborhood, it was a great peak into a world I'm not usually privy too, but I am loving my new neighborhood too! It reminds me of Brooklyn, Queens even. And the apartment is mine! It is close to Kai's school! It is close to all Kai's friends! And it is close to his dad as well! So, needless to say, my little boy is pretty happy with the move. After getting the apartment semi-functional, I spent some time up North in a small, old fishing village called Tisvild e. There's a fantastic beach, surrounded by the woods. There was a lot of Nature, some...