Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Peter de Liefde, from Brill | Sense, for giving me the platform and opportunity to elucidate the beautiful voices of those who are of mixed race, heritage, ability, language, ethnicity, and culture. These are their stories. This is their great work. And I am truly blessed to be part of such a momentous experience and effort to raise awareness, to create a cause for crusading on behalf of those who did not have a voice, could not share their stories, who were (and still are) largely misunderstood with being in two or more races and cultures at once, and yet in neither one at the same time.
I also wish to thank the Philadelphia Museum of Art for their willingness to allow me to use and credit their collection of paintings on this sensitive topic. In addition, I am in debt to Quality Leadership University, its President, Oscar de Leon, and its faculty members, Mariana León and Guillermina-Itzel de Gracia, in Panama City, Republic of Panama, for their interest and generosity in partnering with me for this project.
Many of the poems, stories, research, and artifacts contained in this volume have been on the minds and in the hearts of its contributors. For years they have fought, suffered, and endured the pains and privileges of being of more than one, of belonging to more than a singularly constructed race, ethnoculture, ability, language, or background. They have carried with them the secret awkwardness and peculiarity of being able to (and not) cross borders, transcend cultures and time, and to transgress the entities of social constructions placed on them and others. May this volume collectively offer them a sense of peace, of liberation, in belonging to an idea and to a people they can call their own, and to offer its readers a greater sense of knowledge, compassion, and engagement for those who surround them daily that are of the great homily of pain and privilege.