Mixed (up) heritage

By March 10, 2015blog, English

Mixed (up) heritage

My daughters have a Polish mother and a South African father. Their paternal great-grandparents come from a variety of places, including Scotland, Ireland, and France.

Their maternal ancestors have been cabbage and rye growers on a farm near Warsaw for generations.
The girls see themselves as English, or to be precise they say they are half Polish, half South African and fully English. Wonky arithmetic, flawless logic.

My nine year old writes stories. I believe this shows her subconscious effort to make sense of her mixed up heritage and national identity;

My dad is a werewolf, my mum is a witch, my granddads are skeletons, my uncle and auntie are zombies, one of my grandma’s died so she is a ghost now. But of course, the scariest of all is my other grandma, she is a… were-bunny. Lils is the only mortal in our family. She knows that she is the only mortal, but she pretends to be proud. We all know that she isn’t proud and wants to be one of us. The only way she could turn into an immortal is if we traded souls. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a human but it is extremely dangerous to trade souls. I asked dad once but he said that we should be proud of what we are and anyway, Lils doesn’t  know about trading souls, it is better that way.

The rest of the story available by written applications to Alexia’s agent.