LIVE.

MY MUM IS WHITE: Exorcising Half-caste Ghosts is now live on HOME’s website.
https://homemcr.org/whats-on/linda-brogan-my-mum-is-white-exorcising-half-caste-ghosts-8n1s.

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Ghosts.

Wednesday, just gone, 23.07.25, the mixed-race participants meet for the first time.

• Freelance Choreographer: Darren Pritchard.
• Equality and Diversity Compliance Officer for UK Universities: Elly Holmes.
• Her son, my great nephew: Baby Shiloh.
• Factory International Community Connector: Victoria Ofovbe.
• Factory International Community Partnerships Manager: Abi Clarke.
• Head of Partnerships and Engagement, Manchester Museum: Ciaron Wilkinson.
• Psychologist: Professor Adam Danquah.
• And me. Playwright, performance and visual artists: Linda Brogan.

To:

• Agree the letter of agreement.
• Each declare one non-negotiable house-rule.
• Have curation ideas.
• Have exorcism ideas.

These are five-minute jobs. Each are great, ambitious, upwardly mobile in their powerful job. We are excellent at speaking whiteface. (Remember whiteface is not to do with colour — read the last newsletter.)

The bulk of our day is talking brown-face to people who understand. Confessing truths. Listening. Raising real ghosts that have been masked by our dual heritage.

The best way I can explain this is: a single heritage family ghosts are cradled by their governing culture. Grandparents. Cousins. Its wider beliefs and customs. It takes a village to raise a kid. Two cultures have a fission. Sometimes a canyon. Missing grandparents. Hierarchical cousins. Parents without cultures in common. The child falls through the gap. The ghost falls into the gap with them. Them and the ghost grow up, side-by-side, in the dark.

If I could tell you the stories, this would make immediate sense. But one of the non-negotiable is everything is sacred. Nothing said in the group must leave the room. I uncover our real ghosts in this mind-map on my way home.

I also uncover me putting my hand in the ocean — look at the top of the picture — feeling the currents. The current tells me how far we are from land. A TED Talk Filipino spoke of this phenomenon. Lost, romantic, indigenous superpowers always wow me. We are excellent at whiteface. What about our shelved black traits. What is our version of putting our hand in the ocean to feel the currents? It has to be there.

Curation

• We visit HOME's gallery. I have promised to work with what we inherit. Thinking on my feet it becomes obvious. We’ll keep the projector.

• Each participant will curate a photo-slide. 15mins of photos, birth certificate, death certificate, school reports, kids, grandparents, anything they want to include. Projected huge. Looped.

• And the playlist of their life: 15 mins minimum. They can underscore their projection if they want. Or do an entire hour that their loop fits into. Whatever they fancy, whatever is them.

• Their individual, scored, projection will play on the day they write their 12-word generated memoir that answers — the Jim Crow segregated sink inspired question — what does a mixed-race sink look like? I transform into 8' x 8' 8-station mind-maps.

• I ask psychologist Adam to think of his office design. The other side of the wall on which the participant’s montage will loop. He remembers when he worked in a beautiful office. And he was driven out by their abhorrence of his single kinky hair in the sink. 'You have to think about what you loved about that office. Even the light coming through the windows. And we will recreate it, curate it, to heal that wound.'

Navigating the mind-maps that now hang from the ceiling not the wall. A real forest. Thank you Dawn Walters of Factory International, for this wonderful idea.

• Leaving the ugliness of the gallery interpretation.

• Beside the 8 pillars of caste detailed by Isabel Wilkerson in her book Caste.

• We pass through our playlist-ed montage.

• Into the ghost of Adam’s plush office.

• Where we ask what does a mixed-race sink look like?

• Conjuring a forest of ghosts.

• We navigate with our fingertips in the current.

• To reach the Gods who will make us safe.