How I Lost My Accent (Mark)

I sat in the newsroom of the publication where I worked as a reporter, listening with interest as my Latino colleague explained to one of the graphic designers about how important it was to include the accent mark in his surname when his byline appeared in the paper. For the purpose of this writing, I've changed details to protect my colleague's privacy, so let's just say his surname is "Díaz."

"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.)

With Politics Dominating The Headlines, 'Hamilton' Seems Even More Relevant

With politics dominating the headlines and debates raging about the checks and balances that the founding fathers put in place, the smash Broadway musical "Hamilton" seems more relevant than ever.

On Super Bowl Sunday, "Hamilton" grabbed headlines yet again when Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones performed "America the Beautiful" during the game's pre-show. The women, who originated the roles of the Schuyler sisters in "Hamilton," added lyrics to make the song more inclusive, according to Slate Magazine. When they sang "crown thy good with brotherhood," they added "and sisterhood," which elicited cheers from the crowd.

With its uncanny ability to speak to these ever-changing times, "Hamilton" is the hottest ticket in town ‒ not only in its perpetually sold-out Broadway run, but in every city the musical visits on its national tour. So when I heard that the "Hamilton" tour was coming to my neck of the woods, I vowed to land a ticket. I can't wait to see "Hamilton" in Cleveland during Playhouse Square's 2017-18 season.

The occasion will have a special significance, since Playhouse Square is the venue where I presented the play I wrote and directed, "The Springtime of Our Lives," in June 2014.

There's just one problem: neither the website for Playhouse Square nor "Hamilton" lists the dates or for the Cleveland engagement or allows you to buy tickets. Since "Hamilton" tickets are bound to sell out instantly, it seems like the only thing to do is to monitor the websites every day to check for when tickets go on sale.

Unless you do this:

Buy a season ticket for Playhouse Square's current 2016-17 season. In the coming months, you'll be given the option to renew your season ticket for the 2017-18 season, which, of course, includes "Hamilton."

The fact that I ended up buying a season ticket for Playhouse Square was one of those "happy accidents" that life hands you. I live in Columbus, which is more than two hours south of Cleveland. But buying a ticket for Playhouse Square's entire season comes with the added benefit of seeing shows I wouldn't ordinarily see. I look forward to driving to Cleveland to "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," "Something Rotten!" and "An American in Paris."

In fact, since I'm a writer and director who plans to eventually revive my play "The Springtime of Our Lives" and bring other theatrical productions to the stage, attending shows at Playhouse Square will be educational ‒ an informal "drama school."

Rather than purchasing tickets for a theater's entire season, I'm sure most "Hamilton" fans would prefer to see only that show ‒ and maybe see it multiple times since it's become such a cultural phenomenon.

But buying a season ticket is a relatively inexpensive way to support other deserving shows and to broaden your cultural horizons.

(Chris Bournea is the writer and director of the forthcoming documentary "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring." Bournea is also the co-author, with Raymond Lambert, of the book "All Jokes Aside: Standup Comedy Is a Phunny Business.")

'Hidden Figures' Success Astounds Even Black History Experts

This past Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, my mom, sister and I left a local movie theater in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in disbelief in what we had just seen onscreen. The movie was "Hidden Figures," and each of us couldn't believe that we had never before been exposed to this true story about African-American female mathematicians and engineers whose brilliant work helped NASA launch the legendary 1962 space flight of John Glenn, a fellow Ohioan who recently passed away. 

My sister is herself a black female engineer, but even she had never heard of this amazing and inspiring story until the movie's release. 

Could anyone have predicted that a movie about African-American women excelling in a field in which they aren't traditionally associated would rocket (pun intended) to number one at the box office, beating out even the latest installment in the behemoth "Star Wars" franchise?

"Hidden Figures" has not only received one of the coveted Academy Award Best Picture nominations, the movie has raked in more than $100 million at the box office ‒ a bonafide blockbuster. Since the movie was produced for just $25 million (modest by Hollywood standards), it has turned a quadruple profit. 

The success of "Hidden Figures" is especially phenomenal, considering it disproves Hollywood's widespread belief that in this digital age of a million entertainment choices, moviegoers won't flock to character-driven movies with women as the lead characters ‒ especially ones that don't have eye-popping action and special effects.

The story of the real-life women behind "Hidden Figures" has surprised even those who are well-versed in black history. When appearing on "The View" on Martin Luther King Day, Van Jones, a former staffer in the Obama White House and an outspoken activist, 'fessed up that he was unaware that black women were instrumental in the history of space exploration.

"I'm an African-American civil rights dude. It's my job!" Jones declared, referring to his responsibility of being informed about black Americans' achievements.

Tavis Smiley expressed similar amazement when "Hidden Figures" star Octavia Spencer recently appeared on his PBS talk show to promote the movie.

"How did I miss this [story]?" asked an incredulous Smiley, author of such best-selling books as "The Covenant with Black America" and "How to Make Black America Better."

"It's a strange time and people have to chart their course," said Spencer,who has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. "You have to determine how you're going to be part of the solution, and for me it's about putting positive images out there."

Following the lead of "Hidden Figures," I hope to also put out positive images of African-American women with the upcoming release of a documentary I wrote and directed, "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women In the Ring." 

"Lady Wrestler" chronicles the story of sisters Babs Wingo, Ethel Johnson and Marva Scott ‒ African-American women who garnered international success with their athletic grace decades before another African-American "sister act" ‒ Venus and Serena Williams ‒ captured the world's attention. 

"Lady Wrestler" features in-depth interviews with Johnson and other wrestlers who rose to fame in the 1950s and '60s, such as Ramona Isbell and Ethel Brown. The documentary also features commentary from the wrestlers' children on what it was like to grow up with a mom who could take down most men in a matter of seconds.

Like "Hidden Figures," "Lady Wrestler" brings to light yet another "hidden" piece of history about the contributions of African-American women in an area where you don't often see either black people or women ‒ especially back in the day. 

I'll be posting periodic updates about "Lady Wrestler" as the film's release approaches. In the meantime, you can find out more at Ladywrestlermovie.com.

Like President Obama, I Learned The Value Of Diversity From My Interracial Family

"For me... writing was the way I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life ‒ race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces into something relatively whole." ‒ President Barack Obama


With only a couple days left in President Barack Obama's administration, I ‒ like the rest of the country ‒ am looking back on his legacy. There will be countless Obama retrospectives published this week, and this is an especially reflective time for those of us who are African American.

If you're looking for an in-depth, objective analysis of Obama's policies and the effect they had on America and Black America, in particular, this isn't it. This is an intentionally personal reflection on Obama's presidency. 

It certainly has been a major step in the right direction for Americans to have seen a competent black man and his intact, functional family in the White House for the better part of the past decade. I love the fact that black children ‒ especially my nieces, nephews and cousins ‒ will grow up taking for granted that an African American can hold the highest office in the land. It's important for people of all races to see ourselves reflected in our leaders.

One significant way that I see myself reflected in Obama is that, like me, he grew up in an interracial family. Unlike Obama, both my parents are black. And while I'm not biracial like the nation's 44th president, I do have three white stepparents and four biracial younger siblings. 

Obama pondered how his mixed-race heritage led to his ability to relate to voters from different walks of life ‒ and they to him ‒ in Ta-Nehisi Coates' excellent piece in The Atlantic, "My President Was Black." In a series of interviews, Coates elicited some very candid responses from the soon-to-be-former president.

Coates makes the following astute observation about Obama, with regard to race relations:

Obama's early positive interactions with his white family members gave him a fundamentally different outlook toward the wider world than most blacks of the 1960s had. Obama told me he rarely had "the working assumption of discrimination, the working assumption that white people would not treat me right or give me an opportunity or judge me [other than] on the basis of merit."

He continued, "The kind of working assumption" that white people would discriminate against him or treat him poorly "is less embedded in my psyche than it is, say, with Michelle."

I can relate to Obama's words ‒ and maybe it's because, like him, I was raised in an environment where diversity was the norm. I grew up in the 1970s and '80s in Columbus, Ohio, with a white stepfather and two white stepmothers. 

The Buckeye State's capital city may not be one of those "coastal elite bubbles" we've heard so much about since the presidential election last fall ‒ in fact, it's smack-dab in the heart of fly-over territory. My hometown is in the center of a swing state that turned "red" and went for Trump. But the east side neighborhood where I grew up was integrated and afforded me the luxury of ignorance. I was blissfully unaware that my blended family was in any way "abnormal." 

I was one of only a few black students at my Catholic grade school. I then transferred to the majority-black public high school a few blocks from my house. In the late '90s, I graduated with honors with an English degree from The Ohio State University, which has a very diverse, international student body and is like a mini-United Nations.

As an adult, I've made my career as a journalist and have worked in both predominantly black and predominantly white organizations.

I've felt comfortable in each of these environments. Like Obama, when I encounter people who are different from me, the "working assumption of discrimination" isn't automatically embedded in my psyche. 

Is this because of my "positive interactions with [my] white family members," as Coates observed of Obama? Is it because, like Obama's white grandparents, my white step-grandparents treated me well during childhood visits to their farm in rural, lily-white Mt. Gilead, Ohio? Mt. Gilead is a place where you would have seen a sea of "Make America Great Again" yard signs had you driven through there leading up to the election.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not espousing the "Diff'rent Strokes" approach to diversity ‒ the notion that black children raised in white environments learn to assimilate and, therefore, tend to be more successful in life. This isn't necessarily the case.

Overall, I had positive experiences with my white family members and classmates growing up. But I've read many accounts of African Americans and other people of color who were adopted into white families and/or went to mostly white schools who were bullied and discriminated against or, at the very least, felt isolated and marginalized, that they never truly fit in.

Just this past Martin Luther King Day, NPR's "Fresh Air" featured an insightful interview with acclaimed African-American journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones in which she discussed the nation's historical reluctance to desegregate schools, her painstaking decision to continue to send her daughter to a segregated school in New York City, and her own painful experience of attending a nearly all-white school in Iowa growing up. Hannah-Jones expounds on the issue in her article in The New York Times Magazine.

I'm certainly not naive enough to believe that we live in a colorblind meritocracy. Rather than this simplistic world view, I take a more nuanced philosophy from Obama. The example he set is that when people of any race have positive experiences with diversity early on, it can give them the tools to navigate a world in which there are many people who don't look, act or think like you. 

(Chris Bournea is the co-author, with Raymond Lambert, of the book "All Jokes Aside: Standup Comedy is a Phunny Business." Bournea is also the writer and director of the soon-to-be-released documentary "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring.") 

Bringing Little-Known History To The Big Screen

As 2017 gets underway, one of the things I'm most excited about is bringing to fruition a project I've been working on for many years: a documentary titled "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring."

"Lady Wrestler" chronicles the story of three sisters named Babs Wingo, Ethel Johnson and Marva Scott ‒ African-American women who garnered international success with their athletic grace and distinctive style decades before another African-American “sister act” ‒ Venus and Serena Williams ‒captured the world's attention by doing the same. 

As teenagers in the 1950s, Babs, Ethel and Marva were recruited by famed wrestling promoter Billy Wolfe, who was described in the press as the “self-made Maharajah of Muscle who had lifted women's wrestling out of the murky confines of carnivals and burlesques to make it one of the top-drawing attractions in America.” 

Wolfe's operation was based in Columbus, Ohio — Babs, Ethel and Marva’s hometown, and where I was born and raised.

As African-American women, Babs, Ethel and Marva were in a unique position, not only battling sexism, but racism as well. While many of their white female peers have been inducted into wrestling halls of fame, these women's names have been omitted from the history books ‒ perhaps due to racism or their reticence to revisit the past. 

"Lady Wrestler" finally tells not only the story not only of the three sisters, but of the dozens of long-forgotten women who blazed trails alongside them.

I'll be posting periodic updates about "Lady Wrestler" as the film's release approaches. In the meantime, you can find out more information at Ladywrestlermovie.com.