Some Of My Best Friends

by Bernard, Emily

• ISBN13: 9780060082772
• ISBN10: 0060082771
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-08
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

In this unusually honest book of essays and other writings, Emily Bernard examines the complexities of interracial friendships: Latino and white, black and Asian, black and Jewish. In essays from such celebrated writers as Pam Houston, Darryl Pickney, Luis Rodriguez, and Susan Straight, among many others, you'll meet a young Italian American college student who rooms with a sophisticated young black man who can trace his college-educated elders back several generations; a second-generation Korean American from the "hood" who is more comfortable with Latinos and blacks than with Korean kids who grew up in the suburbs; and a Jewish man who reflects on his friendship with a black opera singer. Though culturally and ethnically at odds, perhaps, they call each other friends; working together, playing together, opening their homes and hearts, even when they have every reason not to. Sometimes controversial, sometimes funny, but always thought-provoking, Some of My Best Friends is a timely work on a subject that has yet to be fully explored.

Table of Contents

Crossing the Line: An Introduction	1	(12)
Emily Bernard
Bi-Bim-Bap	13	(19)
Jee Kim
Nearer, My God. To Thee	32	(22)
John Gennari
Some White Men	54	(10)
Elizabeth Alexander
Cartilage	64	(8)
Susan Straight
Battlefields. or is Friendship Greater than the Colonial and Dominating Race Ideologies of Hundreds of Years?	72	(11)
Luis Rodriguez
Repellent Afro	83	(13)
Trey Ellis
When We Were Friends: A Geography Lesson	96	(21)
Bill Ayers
In My Heart is a Darkness	117	(12)
Michelle Cliff
Secret Colors	129	(28)
David Mura
The Value of Things Not Said: Some Thoughts on Interracial Friendship	157	(11)
Maurice Berger
Gringo Reservations	168	(10)
Sandra Guzman
On the Possibility-Filled Edge of the Continent	178	(11)
Pam Houston
As My Friend Zachary Says Kaddish for his Father	189	(15)
Darryl Pinckney
With Me Where I Go	204	(12)
Somini Sengupta
Some of My Best Friends	216	(3)
Suheir Hammad
About the Contributors	219