Februaiy 22.2012__________________
^ P o rtla n d Observer B lack H isto ry M o n th
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Growing Up Biracial
brown.”
Durrow grew up in northeast
places,” she said.
Portland in the 1980s, which was “a
As an 11 -year-old, Durrow, now scary time,” she said. “It was the
42, moved with her family to Port­ height of the crack epidemic, and
land, where she graduated from gangs had come to Portland. There
Jefferson High School, before re­ was a lot of despair around.”
ceiving an undergraduate degree
As a kid, she said she fought
from Stanford, a Masters in Journal­ against metabolizing that despair of
ism from Colombia and attended the neighborhood, which was made
Yale Law School.
up of mostly people of color. “Ex­
Inspired by both a true story and cept for my mom,” she joked.
the personal experiences of Durrow
“I remember feeling this profound
growing up as a brown skinned girl loss when I would see a classmate
with a white skinned mother, The on the weekend at Fred Meyer, and
Girl Who Fell from the Sky both then Monday at school someone
reveals an impossible and tragedy would say, ‘Hey, what were you
doing with that white lady?’”
Durrow said, “I couldn’t under­
stand at the time why it was I didn’t
seem to be a part of my mom, and I
realized I could infuse some ele­
ments from my own life into the
story.”
She said the greatest honor
comes when youth find reflections
of themselves within her words.
Last year, she said she was teach­
ing a workshop to some students at
a local high school, when one teen­
age girl said, ‘Heidi, you wrote my
life.’
“A piece of me was so excited
that I wrote something that could
Heidi Durrow at 4-years-old.
connect me with someone from a
stricken past, while exploring issues different generation,” said Durrow.
of identity at a time when race con­ “But then the other piece of me was
tinues to build categories of social thinking how horrified I was that
and personal identity.
things hadn’t changed for her.”
According to Durrow, the inspi­
Eventually, however, she said
ration for The Girl Who Fell from the hope won over despair because the
Sky was catalyzed by a newspaper girl found a reflection of herself in
story about a family, like the one in literature, and thus, in the world.
her book, who
“The most important
had died in a car
thing about books
accident, leaving
and being a human
a young daugh­
being in the world is
ter as the sole
knowing that some­
survivor.
one has seen you,”
PILL
“I becam e
she said. “That is a
PROM
o b sessed w ith
hopeful thing for
T H I
this story,” said
me.
IKY
Durrow, who re­
W hen D urrow
members watch­
initially began to
ing TV broad­
write the novel, she
casts of the acci­
said she thought she
dent and digging
would put the char­
A M O » » t
through n ew s­
acters in an “imag­
H E ID I W . D U R R O W
paper clippings.
ined, no where kind
“T h ere
was
o f tim e ,” w ith a
something about this story that sense of the 1980s.
made me want to give that girl a
But to make the characters make
future and a voice.”
sense, she said she soon realized
But that was just the starting the need for a certain time.
point, she said. “When I sat down to
She doesn’t, however, believe
write this story, I knew nothing about the book is purely historical fiction.
her, so I had to go back to the basics “In a way it is historical, but what is
and think about what it was that exciting for me, is it is not preventing
made me so obsessed with the story people from connecting with Port­
to begin with.”
land now,” she said. “It is about the
It had to do with a girl who sur­ history of our city, but we also can’t
vived this tragedy, but it was really be in the present now without hav­
about her missing her mother, said ing that connection still.”
Durrow. “Even though I had a
She said often people only view
mother, who is the most amazing Portland in its “new shiny way,”
mother in the world, in a way I felt with its great restaurants, food move­
like society had divorced me from ments and eclectic neighborhoods.
her because she is white, and I am “But I feel like we can’t own that
continued
from page 3 .
unless we also own the difficult
periods,” she said.
A lth o u g h she ag rees w hen
people say her book is about multi
racial multi cultural identity, Durrow
said the message is beyond the la­
bels. “It’s about being labeled young
and working with or against those
labels to enforcing your identity.”
Durrow explained that she has
watched as individuals marked with
both negative and positive labels,
sometimes given early to youth who
often carry them with them into
adulthood. “They hold onto that,
even if it is to their own detriment,”
she said.
She encourages everyone to
gather the strength to create your­
self in the way you want to be in the
world. One way to do this, said
Durrow, is through books.
Throughout her life, Durrow said
literature has influenced the way
she sees herself and her place in the
world, including work by authors
Toni Morrison, James Baldwin,
Shakespeare, William Faulkner and
Oregon poet William Stafford.
“There are a lot of different voices
I have responded to over the years
Best selling Portland author Heidi IV. Durrow with a copy o f her
book The Girl Who Fell from the Sky.
and my greatest wish is to have all
of those sounds and messages come
out in the writing that I do,” she said.
“Literature matters. It can say some­
thing to us. Not in giant political
statements and directives, but I
mean, literature gives us a chance to
reframe questions.”
And in doing that, she said, we
can reframe the way we look at the
world.
Everyone is encouraged to read
Durrow’s book The Girl Who Fell
from the Sky, which can be bor-
rowed from Multnomah county li­
brary locations, Oregon Public
Broadcasting and the Portland State
University Library.
The public is also welcomed to
share their thoughts at a book dis­
cussion at your neighborhood li­
brary, local bookstore, or elsewhere
in your community. Heidi W. Durrow
will be speaking on Tuesday, March
6 at 7:30 p.m. at the Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall.
For m ore inform ation, visit
www.multcolib.org.
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