Madeleine Ismael

[2006. Me, my sister and brother. I never thought we looked much alike we do in this one.]

1997 | Ealing, UK | Dominican & English

I've always found it funny how much other people look like their parents and siblings. I can see similarities between us but I've also had people think I'm my mum's friend, my dad's girlfriend, my siblings' mother, and so on. It's weird to feel quite alienated from your own family but it goes well with my attitude of independence. I remember one time at Luton airport, dad went ahead to collect our luggage and the person checking our passports (presented with three children with a different surname and different skin to the woman they were with) asked my mum what her relation was to us. I was furious, and I understand why he asked the question, but experiences like this always made me feel a bit like we weren't quite a real, nuclear family. There's this sense of discomfort when us kids are out with one parent, people assuming we're from a broken home or that we've got a bad relationship with the other parent.

Race wasn't mentioned much to be honest; not by my white extended family, and only in relation to blackness by my black extended family, or about how beautiful me and my siblings all were. I understood that I was mixed but so were a lot of people around me, like my classmates. I didn't feel like it was something that made me that different until later on, once the conversation around racial identity became more common and I realised how monoracial England is. Visits to my grandmother in Cornwall made this more evident or dealing with awkward situations like my mum being so sure she could use the N-word and all of us kids saying nope, not allowed, even though you've got three brown kids! As I grew into my teens I started to see more mainstream media about mixed raced people (still not loads, HaluHalo is probably the only dedicated source I've seen) and a lot of body positivity about black women on the internet. I was seeing a lot of alternative views/images of biracial people, which was honestly lifesaving.

Because my dad worked away from home often when I was growing up, and our childminder and au pairs were mostly white to some degree, I lacked much of a relatable black role model till my cousin moved in with us for a while. She's a very light skinned Dominican native so I reckon we share some of the same experience of being prejudged within our own racial communities. I've always been perceived as more 'white' because of my accent, and I used to shy away from black culture to the point that many of my white friends had more knowledge and understanding of it than myself. I think I felt forced to identify with a black identity I didn't know; the stereotype of an identity, style and attitude that I didn't really have. But through the process of healing from teenage trauma and being supported by people I love and trust, I'm now re-learning my identity and forming it as I go along.

[2019. Me in the middle with my sister and brother. I love this cause they're both developing their own style and, more importantly all three of us are in the picture and we're all smiling. It's a rare sight.]