Sharmane Fury Discovers Her Family, Creates Community

Warning: A head’s up there are a few curse words in this episode.

Sharmane Fury is mixed race. She identifies her races hierarchically. First, she says she’s black.

SHARMANE: When I was around black people, I was always black. There was never, never a sense of not being, not necessarily a sense of not being enough …Someone might say you won't understand because you're not all the way black. Generally I got to be Black around Black people. But I didn't necessarily get to be Japanese around Japanese people. And despite having two white grandparents, I was never a white person… 

No one in her family looked like her. People often tried to make her feel different. So that made finding a sense of belonging hard. 

This is a story about finding home.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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Sharmane Fury’s parents got together when they were 14 and 16 in Sacramento, California.

SHARMANE: I'm a product of disastrous teen parents. 

Neither her mom or dad were very stable parents.

SHARMANE: Dad was super abusive. He went from being a drug dealer dad to a born again Christian dad with the same enthusiasm at which a person who is sort of addictive personality was into drugs came into Christianity and became way more abusive as a Christian than he ever was when I was younger. 

Her mom struggled to pay the bills, so Sharmane’s grandmothers and aunts took turns taking care of her growing up. 

SHARMANE: I moved around a lot, was raise raised by a lot of different people. Um, whether relatives or just community people kind of looked after me a lot as well. 

Often Sharmane felt like she was on her own… and it wasn’t until she was eight years old that she began to learn what made her unique. 

SHARMANE: Both of my parents are a biracial. My, my dad was black and white British, uh, like a mix of English and Welsh. My mom is Japanese and Appalachian white. So my black grandfather married a white British woman, my white Appalachian grandfather married a Japanese woman. 

She remembers the first time someone bought her a doll that wasn’t white or blond. She recalls opening the box on her birthday…

SHARMANE: I didn't get the legit cabbage patch. I got the knock-off cabbage patch. And they basically just put a brown headed knockoff, cabbage patch like a Chinese outfit and we’re Japanese, but it was like close enough, you know? And she's like brown hair, Asian outfit, boom, that's close enough. And I just remember being so excited.

But even though her new doll looked a little bit like her, Sharmane was still living in a world that didn’t always want to make room for her…or her family. Like she remembers one Father’s Day when she was in third grade … all the kids had made cards, and the teacher had everyone bring in a picture of their dad. A blond kid in the class looked at Sharmane’s picture.

SHARMANE: She’s like, why is your dad poop colored?  And I was like, my dad's not poop colored. And she's like, yeah, yeah, he is. 

For the first time she looked at her parents from a new perspective and realized they weren’t the same color as each other. 

SHARMANE: I don't think I thought about it before. And if I did think about it, I probably thought about it in the way that like lions and tigers aren't the same color, but they're both cats or something like that. Right. You know, like I don't think I had, uh, anything formed until that day. So the next day she comes to school and tells me she can't be my friend anymore because my dad is a nigger hard R whole thing. And I had never heard the word before that I could remember. And so I went home and asked my mom what this word meant. And my mom was very high tempered and she's five foot, half an inch of fury. She was ready to beat up the parent... And she explained to me that there was this concept of like people with different skin colors. And sometimes people aren't going to like us because our skin color is different. 

Sharmane felt confused.

SHARMANE: She as a little girl didn’t know what that word meant. I as a child didn’t know what that word meant yet it was meant to harm and to make me feel wrong. 

LAUREL: Did your parents want you to know about your heritage?

SHARMANE: We knew we were Japanese at my grandma's house. My grandmother was Japanese. We had Japanese stuff around the house. We ate Japanese food. We didn’t speak it because Japanese tend to be very assimilating. The military had told my grandmother, like not to teach her children Japanese cause it's bad enough that they were half-breeds …And so there was things where, like I knew we were Japanese, but I knew we were Japanese conditionally. We didn't get to mention that we had a black father.

At school Sharmane gravitated toward the Black kids.

SHARMANE: What’s different among Black people is the sense of automatic family. That goes back to enslavement because they separated because they stole us from our country, lands and people. And then they put us here on this strange country and separated us from our family, bred us to have children with people we weren’t familiar with then took children away. We automatically culturally assume we’re related because we don’t know that we’re not, which is why a lot of us refer to each other as cousins. I get accepted in Blackness despite looking ambiguous because Black people can tell from my face and because of my features. Almost every black person will tell me they have an aunt that looks like me or a cousin looks like me. 

Sharmane recalls in the sixth grade white kids making fun of her.

SHARMANE: I’d get made fun of a lot for having big lips because I was so pale. My aunt tells me to make fun of your lips too. It takes the power away from them. I started to pretend it wouldn’t bother me. During that process it was really painful. I hated doing it. It made me feel bad about myself further but as I started to realize it took power away I came out on the other side loving my lips and how big, beautiful and coveted they became over time. 

When her mom couldn’t afford to pay the rent, Sharmane went to live with her aunt in Sacramento. As she grew older her aunt, who was Japanese, laid down more rules. 

There were rules about feelings.

SHARMANE: I come from Japanese and British cultures, I was raised by two women who were just like, we don't do that. I come from these two cultures that aren’t emotionally expressive. And then I'm also black, which is very emotionally expressive. And that conflict like goes on inside. Like it's a fight inside me all the time.

Then there were the rules about dating. Initially Sharmane thought that was because her parents got together so young. But through her 20s her aunt still frowned on dating.

SHARMANE: I had curfews until I was like 25 because I couldn't move out. That was the other thing I wanted to move out and my aunt was like no you’re not moving out.

Turns out her aunt was expecting her to move into her role of taking care of the family. But Sharmane started dating her best friend from high school Tristan Johnson.

TRISTAN: Me and my friends we always sat at a particular table during lunch and I walked into have lunch that day and she was sitting in my spot. And she was beautiful to me. Her whole face she’s got a ninja turtle nose, beautiful eyes, beautiful lips. I don’t know everything.

Sharmane was really curious about Tristan’s race.

TRISTAN: I thought I was white my whole life. When I met Sharmane she’d always ask me what are you, what are you? And I was like I’m white. She cared about race forever. She’s always cared about it but she insisted I was not white. I told her you can come to my house and see my white mom and white dad. She’s like what the fuck is going on here? And one day my sister had a fight with my dad and just blurts it out that’s not your real dad anyways…A little bit later they showed me adoption papers. But Sharmane went on this hunt to find my biological father. It was years and finally she found him. We went and met him. Turns out I’m half Palistinean, German and Italian. 

At one point Tristan and Sharmane got their own place. Her aunt was not happy about it so Sharmane came by often, did her laundry at their house, and checked in with her aunt and grandmother. But the busier Sharmane got with her job and relationship, the less frequently she called and stopped by.

Then one day Sharmane couldn’t get out of bed. She had a full body muscle spasm. She was stuck in bed for over a week. Her aunt called, needed Sharmane to help her haul something from her work with her truck. Sharmane explained she physically couldn’t get out of bed…let alone drive. 

And that didn’t go over so well.

SHARMANE: I got home the day that I was supposed to come home and the doors were locked. All the locks had been changed… continued to call for the next two weeks. Didn't didn't hear from anybody. So I called the police and asked, what do I do if my stuff is in my aunt's house and I can't get her to answer the phone. And so they called to set up appointment for me to come and get my stuff.  In Japanese families, when we stopped talking, we stopped talking forever. And so there's not like a conversation you have to like wrap up. You don't like debrief on your relationship… The door locks changed and we weren’t family anymore. And that was the end of our relationship. PAUSE 

I didn’t drink, I didn't do drugs, I didn't stay out late, I always called to check in. At that point I’m not proving enough? I was a senior project manager at a market research firm by that point working 16 hour days sometimes. I was responsible in every aspect of my life but I was a child when I came home. And that got real tough but also I didn't see a way out. I didn't know what my life could possibly be if I always had to check in.

Sharmane still doesn’t know exactly what happened but has her suspicions.

SHARMANE: It could also be that there were things she didn't want to do in her life that it was easy to use me as well I have Sharmane, so I can't get married or I have Sharmane, so I can't do this other stuff. I do think there were things in her life too that possibly having an adult child was a way to like, not have to live that life I think.

Many years went by. No calls, no letters. Once again Sharmane felt abandoned, without a home. PAUSE

It wasn’t long after that Sharmane married Tristan. Tristan says Sharmane’s aunt and her grandmother didn’t come to the wedding. 

TRISTAN: Disowning a person, a family member was completely foreign to me and my upbringing.

Five years ago the four of them – grandmother, aunt, Sharmane, and husband Tristan – ran into each other in San Francisco. They were all attending the Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual event that celebrates Japanese culture. Sharmane used to go with her family. She wanted to share it with Tristan and they were meeting up with friends. She and Tristan were walking out of a hotel near Japantown where they’d stopped to use the restroom before heading to the parade.

SHARMANE: As we were coming out of the hotel I did see my aunt first. So I kind of positioned myself and my husband so he wouldn’t see them and hopefully she wouldn’t see me. I didn't want to put my grandmother through I didnt want her to suffer the distance between my aunt and I. Knowing there was nothing we could do like this is how I was raised to do things. And I failed. He’s too tall. He sees them and yelled, wait! And made us all talk.

TRISTAN: Oh my Gosh it was so obvious to me when I saw them. And everyone started walking a different direction. Sharmane had already seen them and I saw them and I was like that optimistic like ooh we can reconcile. And I said, everybody stop! They turned and saw who we were.

SHARMANE: We did the polite very Asian thing. We said hi and we hugged too which was weird on my aunt’s part because I don’t like to fake behavior but she did hug me I got to hug my grandma. I could see the pain on my grandma’s face that I was leaving and that was difficult because I never did want to put my grandmother in that situation. It was also very japanese of me to not reveal my pain and just say hope you have a great day and then leaving…

TRISTAN: The falling out with her auntie Sharmane has often described it to me as it’s just implementing the teachings of what her auntie taught her. We cut ties and we don’t have to forgive. I grew up Christian and forgiveness was always part of our story. There’s part of me that really really laments the loss of that relationship and over… It’s not even clear what it was over.

SHARMANE: For me it was recapturing this childhood event that I would go to every year with my family. That’s the last time I’ve gone to Cherry Blossom. I realized my anger about the thing between my aunt and I had dissipated at that point. The heat anger was gone. At that point it was just like all those years of my life and childhood was just in the past now. We weren’t family anymore, we were relatives.  

Sharmane has found a way to see her grandmother every once in a while but in secret.

SHARMANE: So if I came into town, my mom would rent a hotel. My grandma would come visit me at the hotel. Um, and that's, it was, it was like having an affair with your grandmother. Like literally we were in a hotel room because she doesn't want anybody to know, see us together so that she didn't have difficulties at home. 

For much of her life her one constant has been her husband Tristan.

TRISTAN: My parents were very stable. They never yelled at each other…I remember early on hearing Sharmane’s story and wanting that for her. I want her to feel that stability that I’ve had in my life.

SHARMANE: He's the person who makes me laugh the most, the person I've known the longest, or, you know, in terms of partnering, um, we've been together for nearly 22 years and then we've known each other seven years before that. So he's the main person. He's the person.

Sharmane couldn’t quite get over the feeling of never belonging. In fact she and Tristan are polyamorous. But that has its complications. 

Building lasting friendships with people who truly get her has been hard. She moved around so much shuffling between aunties that she never wanted to get too close to anyone.

SHARMANE: It's a mix between like not wanting to get too close to people because I might leave at any moment to like needing to dig in so hard that someone was like, whoa, this is a lot of relationship, you know? I had a mix of that like no no no don’t separate me from people. I definitely have like super abandonment issues, like of all the things in therapy that I worked through, that one doesn't go away, you know?

And while Tristan is her person, and they could discuss race on a philosophical level, Sharmane wanted to connect with people who had struggled with racial identity and belonging the way she had. She looked to the media and entertainment for someone, anyone who looked like her and dealt with similar issues.

SHARMANE: I can identify with a lot of black entertainment, but not all of it because I'm, at all times walking around as a black and Asian person. I could sometimes relate to some Asian stuff, but very rarely. And then if it was an all white family, the only way I could kind of relate is if it was specifically British. So other than that, like where the hell am I, am I just completely non-existent in the world because media doesn’t show me?

So Sharmane enrolled in film classes. She wanted to make a mainstream movie that reflected her experience. But her teachers didn’t get her ideas. 

SHARMANE: My teachers were white. They didn't see themselves in it. So they're like, who can relate to this? And I'm like, literally me the filmmaker, the person who did the thing, I can relate to this… I needed someone to step in to like allow me to exist in the work that I created.

PAUSE

She’s abandoned by her family. She’s being told her creative work isn’t valid. She ends up losing her job. That sends Sharmane into a dark place, stuck on the couch for days, avoiding people, not showering.

SHARMANE: And I went into a very very deep depression and spent many months on the couch. I needed something to get me to take a shower for.

For a few years, she had this seed of an idea in her head… something she just didn’t feel like she had permission to do. What if she made her own creative space – a podcast where she could talk to people like herself?

SHARMANE:  And I was like, oh, no one would listen to that. Like that would literally just be for me. I was like, I might as well just talk to the mirror… I was waiting for validation. I was waiting for approval. I was waiting for permission and didn't know that that's what I was doing so easily derailed by lack of approval or lack of permission. 

But she felt like she had to at least try it. It was almost this life or death thing. So she makes a pact with herself to create seven episodes.

SHARMANE: Within the first couple of months I realized I was never going to be allowed to quit even if I wanted to.

EXCERPT FROM PODCAST INTRO 

SHARMANE: I remember in particular the fist one that got to me. His name is Jewels. And he messed me up. Like he didn't mean to, he was just telling his own story. But while we were, while we were in this like circle of validation, like he would tell me something. I was like, oh no, me too. And then I'd tell him. So he was like, oh, me too.  We kept doing this thing. 

PODCAST EXCERPT 

SHARMANE:…when I hung up, I just like, I just collapsed and just was hysterical, crying. In hearing the other experiences of mixed people who also got invalidation constantly, or, or just didn't get to feel like they could be their full, mixed self, it was just like, it was so emotional for me. By the seventh one who is the guy who wound up in the first episode he and I are both crying on the thing I was like this is terrible I can’t do this I can’t cry in front of people. But then I was like you know what there’s more of a need. I didn’t realize it was therapeutic. Then I realized I have to do this… It has always been a form of like trying to find family or trying to find people who are, have a similar experience of me, of abandonment and or separation in some way, shape or form to try to support and help people in those situations. 

People she’d never met started contacting her saying: I’ve never heard other mixed people talk about it or they’d felt abandoned by their family too. Suddenly Sharmane realized this podcast wasn’t just for her but it was a service to others like her.

SHARMANE: And then just being a person that listened to them and validated their experience. Um, because, because they hadn't met other mixed people, they were constantly met with like, you know, the white parents saying, well, you're just like me, even though they're brown. And I was like, but I'm not, you know, I, I walked through the world differently than you do and people receive me differently. 

She credits her aunt for teaching her how to show up with people, despite the fact that she shut out Sharmane. And now after 160 plus episodes the podcast has taken on a life of its own.

SHARMANE:  I have group checks and I have discord channels and I got emails and I have DMs of just people who reach out because either they've heard somebody's story on the show and they identified with it and it made them feel less unusual or to the ones who have reached out to me and said how do I get through this experience? 

TRISTAN: She’s definitely feels like she’s accepted in this community and I think revered in this community by some people.

Militantly Mixed recently won the Asian American Podcasters Association's Golden Crane Award. And Sharmane says that feels validating.

SHARMANE: If I pass up the opportunity to just say, I believe you, I understand that that experiences is a real thing. If I pass that up, I now have crammed that further down into their gut of like denial and invalidation and, and not being able to be seen as a whole person. Um, I miss an opportunity to allow someone to be, … But really you can so easily crush a person. You don't even realize how easy it is to crush a person when just by not listening. I figured that out finally about myself, about how often I wasn't listened to then now I have to listen to everybody, …I can see the light go out of people's eyes. … I just can't, I can't abide by it. Like, I just can't let it happen anymore if it's going to happen in front of me. And, um, and literally I'll tell you the amount of times someone has just like, let it all go, like burst into tears or whatever, let it all go. Because all I said was like, I'm listening. 

Sharmane had finally found a place where she belonged, the homecoming she had craved. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

This episode was produced and hosted by me, story edited by Camila Kerwin of the Rough Cut Collective, music from Blue Dot Sessions. Annie Gerway creates original illustrations for each episode. You can see them at 2 lives dot org or on our social sites -- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @2LivesPodcast.  Sharmane Fury hosts the podcast Militantly Mixed.

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