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Melissa Lowery's documentary, Black Girl in Suburbia, will debut June 7 at the Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro.

(Melissa Lowery)

Melissa Lowery's new documentary was inspired by a conversation she had with her six-year-old daughter.

"A friend in her class asked why her hair was different than the other girls," Lowery said. "My daughter wondered why she was the only brown girl in class who didn't speak Spanish."

Lowery, 38, understood how her daughter felt. Growing up in West Linn in the '80s and '90s, Lowery, too, was the only African American girl in many of her classes.

"I started thinking about the experience of being a person of color in a predominantly white community," she said. "I was curious to see if others had an experience similar to mine."

Three years after that conversation, Lowery is ready to debut "Black Girl in Suburbia," a film that explores questions of race and identity in suburban communities.

Black Girl in Suburbia debuts June 7 at the Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro.

Lowery is a 2010 graduate of Pacific University in Forest Grove, where she received a degree in media and developed a passion for storytelling. The film, Lowery's first, will debut at the Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro on June 7.

In making the film, Lowery spent time in her daughter's school in Hillsboro, talked to teachers about diversity in the school system and interviewed dozens of others. She traveled to Eugene to speak with African American and biracial girls about their experiences. Several girls recounted feeling isolated when a teacher stopped class to ask if saying the "n-word" in front of them was OK.

"I wanted them to know they aren't alone in their experience," she said.

By all measurements, Lowery had a great childhood in West Linn. She lived in a modest three-bedroom house. She had good friends. The documentary is not a "woe is me" story, she said.

But Lowery did struggle with forming an identity. She talked "white," so she would find herself wondering if she were too white for black kids, or too black for white kids.

She also recalls the questions from classmates: Why do black people do this? Can I touch your hair? Lowery said she understands that many of the questions came from a place of innocence, not purposeful ignorance.

"When you're an African American kid in a white community, there's a lot of pressure on you," she said. "You're the only one they know. You carry the black community on your shoulders."

After graduating high school, Lowery moved to Southern California for 11 years. She married a man from Oregon and they returned to the state in 2005 and settled in Hillsboro. Lowery is now a full-time mother, Zumba instructor and city of Hillsboro employee.

"I don't have any problems living where I live," she said. "I know who I am and can be comfortable anywhere now."

-- Michael Bamesberger

Take a look at a clip from the documentary below: