New York, NY (PRWEB) July 9, 2008
The month of July at International Family Magazine brings the Multi-Cultural Family into the news headlines for July, 2008. The Multi-Cultural family spectrum is large. Migration and travel of peoples and cultures over the ages has brought about the “Multi-Cultural Family”. When people hear this modern term “multi-cultural” they may assume this means peoples from different cultures and race. But many families are made up of multiple cultures and the same race. Whether by marriage or by migration, countries and cultures have been mixing for centuries. But it is in this contemporary time of the “rainbow” family made famous by such celebrities as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, or Madonna and Seal, that the term “multi-cultural” has reached popular usage with families and communities both in the U.S. and abroad.
In the course of history in the U.S., Africa, and Germany, multi-racial couples and families were illegal for a time. And the rest of the world has participated in carrying out brutal punishments for the social taboos of mixing cultures and race together. Even the British playwright Shakespeare dedicated an entire play to the subject of bi-racial love in his tragedy of Othello. Now that there is no legal restriction to inter-racial marriages, family life is changing.
Writer for International Family Magazine Cheryl Paley heads up the New Global Family column for the monthly publication. Cheryl adopted her daughter Zoe from Guatemala and their color difference and the world around them has been a profound tale to tell. If her stories were a litmus test for how far the world has come out of such savageries as slavery or genocide, we would fail even in such a so-called civilized country as the United States. We know from the wars that still wage in the Middle East and Africa over territories, religion and family ancestry, that there is still a keen taste of hatred in the mouths of many over anything different.
But to read Cheryl Paley’s stories is to laugh, cry and beat against your heart in victory with her. Her stories are a triumph. Cheryl Paley and her beautiful daughter Zoe have chosen an urban setting with many other multi-cultural families surrounding them to revise the old family archetypes. They gather for birthday parties with many other families of same sex parents and adoptive children, single parents and adoptive children, and heterosexual couples and families adding to their home a foreign child to love. Cheryl’s readers go along with her on a new frontier.
There are many stories of a “Multi-Cultural Family” forming after a war has waged. During the fighting, someone has broken the rules and fallen in love with a person from the “so-called-enemy” camp. Ain’t that merciful justice? Or another comic-tragedy? Those love stories during or after battle bring such balance to the world of war.
Writer for International Family Magazine Kent Converse is a Vietnam Vet and Rotarian. Kent spent much time in Vietnam working on service projects with Rotary International after the War. In 1999-2000 Kent and his family hosted the first Rotary Exchange Student from Vietnam in the history of the two countries (http://www.rotary.org). His life dreams of a better world and reads as a great story. Read Kent’s July story, “My Multi-Cultural Extended Family”. Wonderful.
In their 2008 World Tour, International Family Magazine makes a second stop in Latin America. Here they celebrate writer Tess Almendarez Lojacono. Tess was born of a Mexican father, and German/Irish mother. A lot of Tess stories tell the tales of a fictional Mendez family, a Mexican-American immigrant family. Tess stories are passionate, tender and tough.
Tess has been named Latin Family Editor to International Family Magazine to spearhead more collective stories within the Hispanic community. As a published author and community outreach voice within her own vocation, Tess will bring IF mag readers to great heights of awareness and storytelling. Her July story “Walls” is evidence of her frank candidness and her bravery as a writer.
International Family Magazine celebrates two garment businesses for getting multi-culturalism right — Baby Eggi and Belabumbum. Baby Eggi is English and Korean for “baby” and donates 20% of its profits to ANSA, Artists for a New South Africa and Kids Courage Foundation in the U.S. Belabumbum is U.S. and Brazilian based celebrating cross-cultural business and fabrics. The founders of Belabumbum thought the U.S. mother-to-be needed their beautiful bottom to be adorned like their Latin sisters, brava, brava.
Ellen Blaustein writes as Grandma Ellen for International Family Magazine and is in her seventies. She is a writer and witness to the changing definition of family in the U.S and abroad as she tells her tales for IF mag. Ellen is also a world traveler and resident and raised her children for some years in Europe. She raised her own TCK children, third culture kids. Third Culture Kids are children that live for a good amount of time out of their native countries and develop a keen sense of internationalism as their true cultural outlook. Ellen describes her two children as just such examples of modernism and the new socio-cultural mixing and blending between peoples and countries.
