A little girl holds her Tamu doll, circa 1970. Baltimore-based fiction writer and Goucher prof Kathy Flann reflects on her first significant relationship with a baby doll. ——– When I was four, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. “A black doll,” I told her. She flashed a bemused smile. “Well, okay,” she said with a shrug. We didn’t know any black people. Maybe I had seen “Fat Albert” by this point, but I can’t be sure. In my mind’s eye, this doll had long luxurious hair that I could comb. It had cheekbones and breasts. “Charlie’s Angels” had not hit the airwaves yet, and so I did not yet know that sexiness was so powerful that it could solve crimes. But the doll I imagined was not unlike a Charlie’s Angel or a Miss Breck girl — if any of them had been black. I was a white kid from a whiter than white… Read More