[x]

She grew up in the mainstream culture of urban North America, but in the Bay Area and in Montreal, "mainstream" didn't necessarily mean White, even in the 1970s.

It was where Harris could become the woman that her mother always knew her to be: unquestionably, simply, black.

That might make sense if her mother were Black, but her mother was from India.

Why is she thinking or knowing that her daughter is "unquestionably, simply, black?"

"Her mother was Indian," says Lenore Pomerance, who was a close friend of Shyamala Gopalan, "but in the '60s, you were either black or white. There was no real distinction between Caribbean or Indian."

In England, maybe, but so far as the US is concerned, that's ridiculous. Even in Canada, there was quite a difference between Jamaicans and Indians.

She is one of them, even if they mispronounce her name. (It's KAM-ala.)

Or as she says "Comma-la." Maybe the name is pronounced that way and maybe it isn't. It isn't pronounced quite that way in Tamil or Hindi, and the suspicion - right or wrong - is that she says "Comma-la" to make her name sound more like "Pamela."

Or maybe "Kamala" comes from Finnish, where it means "horrible" or "terrible."

[mylife]

Thank God she was not named Dudu Puquala, she may have been traumatized.