...handwriting is so much more personal, isn't it? It's a unique marker of an individual's hand, it marks the time it takes to make each letter, the shapes and angles of each hand are so different. It's beautiful...

I've already noticed how my voice has changed.

The way you put words together is pure magic. You paint a picture...that is so poignant and honest, and yet so brutal. It's amazing for me to absorb the language.

I've grown up all my life being asked "what" I am. People can see that I'm a mixture of white and some shade of brown, and they're dying to know what that is.

His mother was Comanche, but she told everyone she was Mexican.

When he was eight, his mother gave him away.

His name was changed...the Spanish was beaten out of him, and he denied being anything.

That's the shame of being the only dark child in a classroom.

Texas in the 1950's, you see.

There are a lot of people like me. People who know where they come from, and wish they had a true connection.

I always feel like I'm lying when I tell people my ethnicity, because I wasn't raised "in" it. I can't claim tribal membership, and even if I could, how would I be received?

So I go along in the fringes as a white/Comanche/Mexican.

...there is a universality to what you are telling the reader...

Thank you for helping me to connect and to understand who I am more than "what" I am.

#52Letters