I remember I went through a period where I didn't embrace my 'chocolatiness.' I don't know if that's a word, but I didn't embrace my chocolate lifestyle. Just being a chocolate, lovely brown skin girl and being proud of that.
My Uncle, of course, would have been pleased to see someone with brown skin holding the office of president.
My family has always had Cape Verdean pride but I don't think it was something the kids in the family necessarily understood. However, I was very conscious of the fact that both sides of my family were drastically different and my aunts, cousins, and uncles varied in different shades of brown.
Every year, my family and I would go visit my mom's family in Texas. We would drive from Chicago to Texas, and once we started to get towards San Antonio, everyone looked like me! It was such a great feeling. Everyone had the same brown skin that I did.
So now I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun, These people ain't seen a brown skin man, Since their grandparents bought one
I have olive skin, so if I'm in the sun for even 15 minutes, I turn brown.
Us brown-skinned girls get ashy if we don't moisturize.
You know, I don't play the race card a lot. I'm half-black, half-white, and I'm proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn't raise me as a black man. She didn't raise me as a white guy.
I have been painting models with black and brown skin only for the past years. So, I did already have this experience, this is how I have come to the paintings I do now.
By now I was utterly deprogrammed. I walked along naked usually, clothes being not only putrid but unnecessary. My skin had been baked a deep terra-cotta brown and was the constituency of harness leather. The sun no longer penetrated it. I retained my hat.
