Mixed Race Studies

Interview: Nia King, “Bodies on the Line”

Mixed Reader: A blog of mixed race literature
2013-04-27

Tali Weinberg

Nia King is multimedia producer with a passion for social justice. She started out as a zinester writing about mixed-race identity, made a short film about searching for trans-friendly housing in the Bay Area, and has recently transitioned into journalism. Her ongoing projects include a web comic about her interracial relationship, and a podcast about queer and trans art activists of color. Feminist textile artist Tali Weinberg, an MFA student at California College of Art, recently interviewed Nia for part of her thesis on women art activists in the Bay Area. Below is an abridged transcript of the interview.

Do you consider yourself part of a certain activist or artistic lineage?

 As a queer, mixed-race woman of color who’s an ex-punk and an ex-anarchist I feel like there’s lots of different things that I draw from, some of which have nothing to do with my identity. Jaime Hernandez is definitely my biggest influence in terms of my comics. He and his brother do a series of comics called Love and Rockets. His branch of the Love and Rockets franchise is about these two young queer punk rockers growing up outside LA, I think one of them is Chicana and the other is Colombian and Scottish. For me as a young punk growing up in a white scene, seeing queer women of color represented in comics as actual people was a really amazing thing.

 I also really love the visual art. Every panel looks like something you could put up on a wall, which is not something you see with all comics. There’s a really strong graphic style with a lot of solid black and white shapes that are really sort of distinct visually and that’s something I also really draw from…

Read the entire interview here.

Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity

RUSH Arts Gallery
526 West 26th St, #311
New York, New York
Phone: 212-691-9552
2013-04-04 through 2013-05-10

Opening Reception: Thursday, 2013-04-04, 18:00-20:00 EDT (Local Time)
Artist Talk: Saturday, 2013-05-04, 16:00-18:00 EDT (Local Time)

Firelei Báez, Yael Ben-Zion, Cecile Chong, Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, Nicky Enright, Lorra Jackson, Sara Jimenez, and Saya Woolfalk

Curated by Gabriel de Guzman

The 2010 census shows a 32 percent increase since 2000 of Americans who identify themselves as belonging to a multiracial background. They represent the growing multiracial diversity that has become more evident in our country and in our communities during the Obama era. Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity features artists whose work expresses various aspects of their diverse, yet highly individual backgrounds. The exhibition attempts to move beyond the polarized discussions of race and identity politics of the 1980s and 90s and past the limitations imposed by political correctness. It also contests the idea of a “post-racial” society presented by political commentators after the election of Barack Obama. In the four years since the biracial president’s first inauguration, race has remained a critical and contentious topic in national politics. Challenging a monolithic view of race, this exhibition examines contemporary issues of identity, hybridism, and racial ambiguity. At times the artists in the show directly tackle issues that relate to race and cultural awareness. At other times, the artists deal with these issues subtly by acknowledging the spread of multiculturalism in our global society and the ways in which race and ethnicity are fluid and dependent upon perception and context…

Read the entire announcement here.

Exclusive: Sonia Rolland talks activism, new film

Euromight: Your Guide to Afro-Europe
2013-04-15

Epée Hervé Dingong

Sonia Rolland, (Miss France 2000), is an actress and model who has been outspoken about racial issues in the film and fashion industries, and in the media. In this exclusive interview she talks about her work, politics and what it means to be “black” in France.

After being Miss France how did you become a successful actress?

It took a lot of work because I had to convince the acting community that a beauty queen could be an actress. I always wanted to act, but becoming Miss France wasn’t the right way to pursue that goal. When you’ve been Miss France you have always that label. Determination and willingness were the keys and today people talk about me as an actress…

…Do you think you would have more roles in if you were not black or a woman?

It’s not clear-cut when you are mixed race because they don’t know where to put you. If I was totally black I would be put in that category, but I’m mixed, so that’s another thing for them to deal with. However, I was Miss France. Though advantages can mean more difficulties, but that doesn’t stop me. It makes me stronger. I’ve done many projects including Desordres, (her new film) and this summer I’ll be in Michigan shooting a movie called “Radio Days” where I play a French Senegalese woman, then I’ll appear in French filmmaker Tavernier’s movie Quai D’Orsay. I also do the Mixa commercial on TV, which gives me permanent visibility…

Read the entire interview here.

Artists explore the image of mixed race Asian-Americans in DePaul exhibit

Medill Reports, Chicago
2013-04-18

Zhiyu Wang

Medill Reports is written and produced by graduate journalism students at Northwestern University’s Medill school.

In college, Wei Ming Dariotis used to want a T-shirt with “war baby” on the front and “love child” on the back. That way whenever people asked her “what are you?” she could just point to the T-shirt and say, “take your pick.”

Now her imaginary T-shirt has turned into an actual exhibition. The “War Baby/Love Child” show at DePaul University features artworks from 19 contemporary artists, all of whom are of mixed heritage, meaning either they are mixed-raced or they are transracial adoptees.

“This is part of a beginning that people can see visually what it means to be mixed raced,” said Debra Yepa-Pappan, a Jemez Pueblo and Korean artist who lives in Chicago.

The title “War Baby/Love Child” comes from the experience Dariotis, co-curator and associate professor of Asian-American studies at San Francisco State University, had when she was young. When she said her mom is Chinese and her father is Greek /Swedish /English /Scottish /German /Pennsylvania Dutch, people would always ask, “did your parents meet in the war?”…

Read the entire article here.

Opening 4/25: “War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art”

DePaul Art Museum
Chicago, Illinois
2013-04-16

CHICAGO — The DePaul Art Museum explores the construction of mixed-heritage Asian American identity in the United States with “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” which opens April 25.

“It gives visibility to the increasingly mixed generation coming of age by highlighting artworks that map personal biography and the construction of mixed heritage Asian American identity against U.S. and transnational histories,” said Laura Kina, exhibit curator. Kina is a Vincent de Paul Professor and founding member of Global Asian Studies at DePaul University, where she also is an associate professor of art, media and design in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

An opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. April 25 at the museum, located at 935 W. Fullerton Ave., just east of the CTA’s Fullerton ‘L’ stop. The museum is free and open to the public every day. The exhibition runs through June 30.

“Through traditional media as well as video, installation and other approaches, artists explore a range of topics, including U.S. wars in Asia, multiculturalism and identity politics, racialization, gender and sexual identity, citizenship and nationality, and transracial adoption,” said Kina. She co-edited a book of the same title with Wei Ming Dariotis, an associate professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Mequitta Ahuja, Albert Chong, Serene Ford, Kip Fulbeck, Stuart Gaffney, Louie Gong, Jane Jin Kaisen, Lori Kay, Li-Lan, Richard Lou, Samia Mirza, Chris Naka, Laurel Nakadate, Gina Osterloh, Adrienne Pao, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, Amanda Ross-Ho, Jenifer Wofford and Debra Yepa-Pappan…

Read the entire press release here.

SNAPSHOT: “a true story of love interrupted by invasion”

Greenway Court Theatre
544. N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, California
2013-04-04 through 2013-04-21

Mitzi Sinnott

A daughter’s journey through a landscape of years, memories and realities, initiated by her questioning, “what do I know about war?”  The answers are lying in an album of faded photos of her absent father, who left for the Vietnam War before she was born.  Fusing words, dance, music and film this story chronicles the quest of a mixed-race daughter from Southern Appalachia who eventually finds her homeless Veteran father suffering in Hawaii.

Her growing insights reveal how the forces of history, race and war affected herself and her family, and the torn fragments of her life begin to re-connect. SNAPSHOT honors her father and other Vietnam Veterans who have been lost under the avalanche of history. This play is a daring look at the truth of our past and an inspiring example of the need for us to reconcile our history—one life at time.

For more information, click here.

War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art [Exhibition]

DePaul Art Museum
935 West Fullerton
Chicago, Illinois 60614
2013-04-25 through 2013-06-30

As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age, War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art looks at the construction of mixed-heritage Asian American identity in the United States. Working in traditional media as well as video, installation, and other approaches, artists explore a range of topics, including US wars in Asia, multiculturalism and identity politics, racialization, gender and sexual identity, citizenship and nationality, and trans-racial adoption.

The exhibition features works across diverse mediums by emerging, mid-career and established artists who reflect a breadth of mixed heritage ethno-racial and geographic diversity: Mequitta Ahuja, Albert Chong, Serene Ford, Kip Fulbeck, Stuart Gaffney, Louie Gong, Jane Jin Kaisen, Lori Kay, Li-lan, Richard Lou, Samia Mirza, Chris Naka, Laurel Nakadate, Gina Osterloh, Adrienne Pao, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, Amanda Ross-Ho, Jenifer Wofford, and Debra Yepa-Pappan.

Major funding for this exhibition was awarded through The National Endowment for the Arts Art Works Museums grant to DePaul University.

For more information, click here.

Special Event: An Evening with U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey

The Newseum
Walter and Leonore Annenberg Theater
555 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
Telephone: 888/NEWSEUM (888/639-7386)
Tuesday, 2013-04-16, 23:00Z (19:00 EDT Local Time, 16:00 PDT)
This event will be streamed live on Newseum.org

The 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, Natasha Trethewey will read selections from her work, followed by a conversation with Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center, about her poetry, her national role, and the place of poetry in society. She is currently the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.

Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Miss., on April 26, 1966. She is the author of four poetry collections and a book of creative non-fiction. Her honors include the Pulitzer Prize and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2012, she was appointed State Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

Emory University president James W. Wagner will also pay tribute to the university’s long history with poets and their art, much of which is housed in Emory’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library collections.

Emory alumni board president Isabel Garcia will emcee the evening.

The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited. For more information, click here.

Performing ‘Race’ and Challenging Racism

One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for her Father’s Racial Approval
Blog Updates
2013-04-08

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

It is an exciting time to be an actor, when the notion of ‘performance’ is taking on new meanings and has the potential to change the way we view the art form. Traditional definitions of ‘performance’ include the act of staging or presenting a play; a rendering of a dramatic role. Now scholar/activists like Judith Butler are exploring a new definition of performance, or ‘performativity’—looking at how we use language and behavior to construct identity.

In my solo show, One Drop of Love, I get to meld these two understandings of performance. I am an actor who portrays several different characters: my Jamaican/Pan-Africanist father, my Blackfeet–Cherokee-Danish mother, candy and fruit vendors from East and West Africa, Census Workers from the 1790s to the present, racist cops from Cambridge, MA and many others. At the same time, in taking on these roles, I explore the construction of  ‘racial’ identity, and how these identities are created through speech and acts—and not through biology…

Read the entire article here.

Nihon NY – Episode 30 – JERO

Japan Society NYC
2012-06-18

Pittsburgh-native, Tokyo-based enka superstar JERO made his New York debut at Japan Society earlier this month. With his smooth voice and hip-hop stylings, JERO has breathed new life into this sentimental Japanese music genre often associated with themes of one’s hometown, lost loves and sake. Often referred to as the Japanese blues or Japanese country music, enka’s melodies and required vocal techniques make it a quintessentially Japanese musical style. Since releasing his debut single Umiyuki (Ocean Snow) in 2008, JERO has received the Japan Record Awards Best New Artist award and has appeared on Japan’s most prestigious New Year’s music spectacular Kohaku Uta Gassen. In this intimate evening, JERO will talk with the incomparable Japan expert and Japan Society’s former Executive Vice President John Wheeler, about his relationship with the Japanese world of enka and serenade audiences with his own original songs as well as enka classics including those of Misora Hibari (美空 ひばり) and Itsuki Hiroshi (五木ひろし) among others.

On this episode of Nihon NY, we feature snippets of his performance at our venue, as well as an interview about his origins and his career as an enka singer.

The song names in order of appearance:
1. Umiyuki　（海雪）
2. Harebutai　（晴れ舞台）
3. Yuki Guni　（雪国）
4. Tsugaru Heiya　（津軽平野）
5. Suki Yaki （上を向いて歩こう）

Interview begins at 00:11:29.