"I can relate," I told my colleague. "My last name is supposed to have an accent mark, too."
This incident happened in the early 2000s, and in hindsight, I can see that there are some important distinctions between my colleague's situation and my own. For me, the accent mark in my last name, Bournéa (pronounced bor-NAY), is optional. For my colleague, however, including the accent mark in "Díaz" is not just about ensuring that his name is spelled properly, it's about identity. The accent mark is an essential part of who he is.
With the complex issue of immigration front and center these days, I've been thinking a lot about ethnic identity. As an African-American man, I feel solidarity with people of color around the world, including immigrants who have made the brave and often traumatizing journey to build new lives in this country.
My Latino journalist colleague hails from an immigrant family ‒ his mother and father are from two different Latin American countries. But I would have to go back multiple generations to identify an ancestor from a "foreign" country.
Like many African Americans, my family history is complicated by forced immigration ‒ slavery. As is the case with millions of black people, my heritage is made up of both African and European ancestry.
According to family lore, Bournéa is of French Creole origin and my family's roots extend to Louisiana, which was, of course, once owned by France. I've never done genealogical research to confirm or refute this.
I've flip-flopped back and forth over the years on whether to use the accent mark in my name. When I began my career as a journalist in the '90s, typesetting programs were less advanced and the accent mark in Bournéa was fairly difficult to reproduce in print. So for most of my adult life, I haven't used the accent mark.
But a few years ago when I published my first novel, "The Chloe Chronicles," it made sense to insert the accent mark in my author byline, since much of the story takes place in modern-day Paris. The plot centers on the globe-hopping adventures of an exotically beautiful, multiracial young woman named Chloe Bareaux who becomes a world-famous fashion model and finds romance along the way. (Shameless plug :-)
The accent mark issue surfaced again last year when I co-authored the book "All Jokes Aside: Standup Comedy Is a Phunny Business" with Raymond Lambert about his legendary Chicago comedy club of the same name. Our very patient editor, Doug Seibold with Agate Publishing, asked how I would like my name to appear on the cover, since he'd seen my byline with and without the accent mark.
After thinking it over, I decided once again to abandon the accent mark. It wasn't about trying to "American-ize" my last name or ensure that no one mistook me as "foreign." It was a business decision based on the assumption that I'd come across as more professional and be taken more seriously as a writer if I don't have some pretentious, "French-i-fied" flourish in my byline.
After all, I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and I'm decades ‒ if not centuries ‒ removed from any French ancestry I might have.
With the seemingly relentless focus on immigration in recent weeks and talk of border walls and travel bans, I've gained a new appreciation for those who, unlike me, can't simply erase their accent marks ‒ or their verbal accents, for that matter.
Every now and then, someone inquires about the origin of my last name, posing the question, "Where are you from?" It's obvious that what they're really asking is, "Are you a foreigner?"
Most of the time, I play dumb and reply, "I'm from Ohio," which usually results in a change of subject. But sometimes I attempt to explain my complicated family history.
As a native-born American citizen, I have the ability to "code switch," choosing whether or not to use the accent mark in my last name when it's convenient ‒ or inconvenient, depending on the situation. But for people like my Latino journalist colleague, by taking pride in their unique cultural markers, they make an important statement: They belong here like everyone else.
(This is the first in a series of posts that I plan to occasionally publish on the theme "What Does It Mean to Be An American?" I'll share my perspectives and interview others about their experiences in this multicultural society we live in.)
