Let me share some emails with you that I have received since I began this blog.

I just wanted to let you know how grateful I am that you are doing this. I came across your site while searching for information about Mexican Indian DNA tests. [...] Anyway, I found your site, and I have spent hours reading it tonight. I especially loved reading about your familia. I felt myself connecting so strongly with your writings, I am grateful. I too, am of mixed blood. [...] You have alot to say, never shut up. Thank you, —

Nezua, I just wanted to drop you an "aloha" from my perch, looking out at the Ko'olau Mountains of O'ahu [...] I just read your post "The White Lens IV," and can't find words to express how deeply your experience with whiteness and renaming resonates with my experience, as a transracially adopted, renamed, ex-honorary white. True, all your words ring true. Thanks for writing this. [...] Peace, —

[After donating toward the blog] I meant the xtra bucks for S&H. Keep it. None of it is a donation, anyway. It’s a long-term investment in making the world a better place.

Nezua, Thank you for your blog, I'm learning a lot.

I just wanted to say that I am probably not your target audience - a white Jewish girl - but one of my professors told me about your website and I've been reading the archives basically nonstop for the past two days. The desire to eradicate racism/sexism/classism should be transcendant of religion or race or whatever else we define ourselves by and should really be a common human desire. In an area highly populated by Latin American immigrants, (the bay area) I try to do my part: aprender español, be another voice in the struggle, and build bridges between our cultures instead of walls. So, I guess I just wanted to say thanks for giving us gringas the insight we need to make communication a little easier.

Nezua, I just started reading your blog thanks to Kai's links. Wow! Especially the White Lens series. I'm going to need some time to digest all of it, but for now, all I can say is thanks for sharing. As a 32 year old white Jewish dad living in suburban NY, your writing is incredibly valuable to me, especially as I try help instill in my 2 1/2 year old daughter positive values, a genuine respect for all people and their history, and a celebration of the many amazing things that unite all of us. I look forward to checking out your archives. And even though I usually just lurk, I have no doubt that your writing will help me grow and continue learning. Muchas gracias por abrir tu corazon!

You have provided me with much "pleasure" [not a native English speaker] or perhaps corraboration and more importantly hope, along with vital informational links concerning what we humans do to each other...

I am as Lilly-white as a Lilly-white adoptee can get, yet I often get into heated discussions with adoptive parents about issues relating to trans-racial adoption. I'm grateful to read what you write here, and I will most definitely be sending these adoptive parents your way. There's only so much credibility I can lend to the importance of respecting, acknowledging, and supporting the race and culture of an adoptee, when I myself am so white.

If these people absorb even the merest fraction of what you share of yourself, their attitudes towards the heritage and blood of their adopted children will be changed forever.

I, for one, will be digesting your words for days and weeks to come. Thank you.

Dude, blown away! [...] I am your cousin, —— ——. [...] My Dad, —— ——, is here right now...shocked as all get out! And he just moved back to — from —. As you have spoken about quite intelligently, he was one of the brothers who restored ALL of the historical buildings in San Diego. So, basically, he wants to meet you asap. I want you to come up to San Diego and visit as soon as humanly possible!! You are my familia and I would love to meet you personally and entertain you and yours! Great job! Dad had NEVER seen a picture of his father as a young man. Thank you for that! It is a priceless gift! Please call asap. [...] Once again, thank you for all your knowledge, sharing, honesty, and time. Outstanding!!! Un Abrazo A Mi Familia, ——

Nezua, everyday your work amazes me. i teach classes on white privilege and male privilege, and have spent, honestly, probably thousands of dollars on books that don't do it like you do it. rock on. please.

Hola. I found your blog a while ago when piny at feministe posted a link to your post "The White Lens IV [The White Idea]." It was a brilliant post on all fronts, but I want to mention one of the less political, less intellectual points--when you talked about thinking things like moustaches looked bad on you, or hating flourescent lights, and not connecting that to your Mexicanness. This resonated with me a lot. [Lengthy personal story ...]

Thank you also for being such an intelligent, original, inspiring writer, and for putting your writings online. People talk sometimes in the "blogosphere" about "well, what can blogs actually DO?" Maybe, on a grand level, the answer is nothing--but on the individual level, as you have proven to me, they can do very much indeed. gracias & paz, —

I could go on. Really. And this is not about me impressing anyone with my arrangement of words. This is about sharing a very real part of my life, and heart, and others responding and taking part. As I first noted my intentions in my extended bio for this site:

Any time someone honestly relates their personal experience of something, it will bring something unique. At the same time, it will bring something common. And that is why others can latch into it. If it is honest.

As you can see, aside from everything else, I have found family though writing this blog. Family I have never known. I have helped family find each other! People who had not known one another before finding this place. La sangre hace su oficio, my nanita used to say. The blood does its own work. She was a wise, wise, woman. I still grow into her wisdom, and may never stop.

And I have grown through using this blog. I have used the community that comes here to make myself a more learned and understanding person. Perhaps even more importantly, I have (apparently) provided material that has helped others grow, or become more learned and understanding.

You may see "echo chambers" but here, I see real change happening! I see many people making important changes, connections, insights. People telling me they use their experience here to help themselves grow, even to help their children or students learn. Policy change? What do policies change? I'm talking about people, 'mano. I'm talking about people changing.

This is why I never understand when people talk this junk about blogs doing nothing. I am not saying my purpose for this blog should be everyone's, nor that other important things aren't happening in different formats or blogs with different focuses. But what I'm saying is that if that is how you feel, all I can suggest is that perhaps you are not doing enough with your blog, or the right thing. Perhaps your feeling of dissatisfaction or disenchantment with them doesn't have to do with the tool in your hand, but in what you are using it for. Would you blame a dead garden on the rake that you used?

Because we cannot pass a pronouncment on "BLOGS" as a group any more than we can pass judgment on rakes, or scissors, or bullhorns, por ejemplo. Sometimes bullhorns are used to help people find a way out of a dangerous situation...and then, sometimes they are used to channel foul wind from an inflated dummy propped atop a heap of ashes. It wouldn't be fair to denounce bullhorns, per se, just because a liar speaks through one, or because sometimes they are used ineffectively, or as just part of a photo op. Sometimes bullhorns carry very important messages to people who need to hear them at a crucial moment. If you feel like you are toting a bullhorn that emits nothing but wind, put it down. Or use it differently!