Mixed Race Studies

Cup O’Doodles

The Pennsylvania Gazette
University of Pennsylvania
Volume 109, Number 6 (July/August 2011)
pages 54-57

Molly Petrilla

Artist Gwyneth Leech C’81 started drawing on  used paper cups as a distraction when she  got “antsy,” but “then it began to really take over.”  A few hundred cups later, she spent six weeks doing the same thing while sitting in a window  in New York’s Fashion District in an exhibit called Hypergraphia.

On a stormy Monday morning at the end of February, Gwyneth Leech C’81 bought a cup of Irish tea to-go (milk, no sugar) and headed to a display window in New York City’s Fashion District. She spent the next hour or two drawing swirling, plantlike patterns on that and other paper takeout cups—all of which had at one time housed her morning coffee or afternoon tea—as passersby gawked or whispered or smiled or knocked on the glass to say hello.

Then she came back the next day and did it all again, over and over until a full six weeks had passed. The doodles evolved, the drinks changed, but her canvas stayed the same: cups with a matte paper outside and waxy plastic inside. She started with about 250 pre-drawn cups strung up in the window around her and another 25 or so scattered at her feet. By the end of her window residency, she’d created another 100 cup drawings that joined the ones around her. She called the whole thing Hypergraphia, which means the overwhelming urge to write or draw.

“Partly, I wanted to see what 375 cups looks like,” she says, “but I also thought it was a nice-but-provocative way to bring people’s attention to our waste production; it made me think a lot about upcycling and recycling.”
 
An accomplished painter who has also worked with ceramics, video, and printmaking, Leech has exhibited her work around the world, including solo exhibitions in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Philadelphia, and New York City. In 2006, she began a series called Perfect Families, and since then has been painting portraits of alternative and mixed-race families she meets in New York City…

Read the entire article here in HTML or PDF format.

Rumblings of The Earth: Wifredo Lam, His Work and Words

Filmakers Library (an imprint of Alexander Street Press)
1996
23 minutes

Denise Byrd

Awards

• San Antonio CINEFEST, 1996
• Latin American Studies Association, 1995

The Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam played a leading role in bringing the art of the non-white world to the attention of the international community. Of mixed race and cultural heritage, he was born in 1902 in Sangua La Grande, Cuba to a mother who was a descendent of slaves and a father who was a Chinese immigrant. In his youth he was exposed to the rich heritage of African, Santaria and Confucian traditions. These traditions affected him deeply and are reflected in his art which is in the collections of major museums here and abroad.

This film follows Lam from student days in Havana through his development as an artist in Europe where he became a close friend of Picasso and other luminaries. Upon returning to Cuba, Lam rediscovered his roots, became a leader in the Négritude movement, and produced his most famous work, “The Jungle.”

This richly illustrated film uses Lam’s paintings and writing along with interviews with authorities on art and Caribbean culture to trace the evolution of a unique and truly multicultural twentieth century artist.

Fearless Music: Garland Jeffreys ’65

Syracuse University Magazine
Volume 28, Number 3 (Fall/Winter 2011)

David Marc

From his ’70s hit “Wild in the Streets” to his latest album, legendary singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys has taken on life’s big issues with his own eclectic brand of music

From the pages of The New Yorker to deep inside the blogosphere, legendary singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys has been winning high praise for his new album, The King of In Between, released last summer on his own Luna Park label. Loved by fans and admired by colleagues for his fearless movements through rock, R&B, reggae, and whatever other styles he may need to articulate his borderless vision, Jeffreys puts his mastery of popular musical forms in the service of personal expression, a talent he shares with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Feeling “too black to be white, too white to be black,” he occupies his own space and fills it with a gritty sweetness that is hard for likeminded souls to resist.

Growing up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, during the 1950s, Jeffreys learned a thing or two about “diversity” long before the term took on its full contemporary meaning. “I’m from a totally mixed-race family—black, white, Puerto Rican, Native American,” he says. “At the time, we were the only people of color in the Catholic church we attended every Sunday. At school, I had my close friends, but I was also often the only ‘colored’ kid in the class, and every time I met a girl I liked, I had to contend with a race issue. My music has always had a great deal to do with these experiences.” Jeffreys felt more at ease in nearby Coney Island, where beach, boardwalk, and carnival karma drew people of every background imaginable. He also enjoyed the privilege of seeing the Dodgers play at Ebbets Field. “I was just 4 years old, but I was there at the game, April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball,” he says. “Sports have always been an important part of my life, and even helped bring me to Syracuse. My father wanted me to go to Boston College. But Jim Brown [’57] went to Syracuse, and obviously I had to go to school where he went.”

Shortly after arriving on campus, Jeffreys met Lou Reed ’64, who became a lifelong friend. Although both were moving toward their careers as musicians, Reed was studying poetry and Jeffreys had his sights set on art history. “We hung out at the Orange Bar with Lou’s teacher, the poet Delmore Schwartz, and a bunch of people—I guess you’d call them ‘Beats,’” Jeffreys says. “It was a great place for me to be because race didn’t matter; it was all about hanging out and knowing each other.” Felix Cavaliere ’64, who was about to depart for the top of the pops as lead singer and keyboard man with The Young Rascals, was another friend Jeffreys first bumped into on Marshall Street…

Read the entire article here.

Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance

University Press of America (an Imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
February 2004
182 pages
Size: 5 1/2 x 7 3/4
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7618-2775-7

Anita González, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Theatre Arts
State University of New York, New Paltz

Brown-skinned men and women move across Mexico’s national stages dancing the folkloric jarocho, a symbolic blend of Spanish, Native American, and African cultures. Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance traces the evolution and transformation of an Afro-Mexican dance form into a national cultural icon. It is an ethnographic study that compares and contrasts Mexican performance of national identity with Untied States dance styles. The book uses the image of the jarocho as a window to explore the phenomena of racial/cultural mixing that is endemic to Mexico and increasingly apparent in the politics and aesthetics of United States cultural performances.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 List of Illustrations
• Chapter 2 Preface
• Chapter 3 Acknowledgments
• Chapter 4 Introduction: Crafting Self; Frames of Reference; Locale and Methodology; Chapter Overviews
• Chapter 5 Cultural Mixing and Mexican Performance: Mapping Art: Cultural Contexts; Studies in Revolutionary Nationalism: Manuel Ponce; Amalia Hernandez; Celestino Gorostiza; A Legacy of Performance Strategies; Provincial Identity
• Chapter 6 Roots of Jarocho Dance
• Chapter 7 Jarocho as Folkloric Dance: State Images Ballet Folklórico del la Universidad Veracruzana; Miguel Velez and the Authenticity Mission; Raices del Pueblo (The Peoples’ Roots)
• Chapter 8 Jarocho as Theater: Company History, Veracruz, Veracruz Interprets Jarocho; Actors’ Interpretive (Re)Circulations in Veracruz, Veracruz; Implications and Interpretations
• Chapter 9 Remembering and Transforming the Past: Fiesta de las Cruces; Rewriting Government Agendas
• Chapter 10 Conclusion
• Chapter 11 Glossary
• Chapter 12 References
• Chapter 13 Index

The One Drop Rule: How Black Are You?

Crème Magazine
2012-02-29

Jessica Thorpe

“Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud!”  The James Brown classic shed light on the revolution of how descendants of the African Diaspora would begin to self-identify.  Replacing racial identification terms such as “negro” and “colored,” the use of the word “Black” was another step in the direction of breaking the chains of the oppression and injustice that plagued the African American for centuries.

Today, the term “Black” is commonly used to identify African descendants across America and other countries alike.

But what is it to be Black?  How do the descendents of Africa define “Blackness?”  How do we as African Americans visualize a Black person?…

…In recognition of such issues, Yaba Blay, PhD, visiting Assistant Professor of African Studies at Lafayette College, and renowned photographer, Noelle Théard, have collaborated on a multi-tiered media project (1)ne Drop, to open the discussion on the “other” faces of Blackness.  Using the “one drop rule” as a reference, however not affirming or confirming its historical implications, the project will challenge the narrow yet commonplace perceptions of Blackness through a series of essays, personal insights, one-on-one conversations and video interviews with individuals who are not typically embraced as Black within our society.

“This project opens the conversation about the ways in which skin color politics works for people with lighter complexion.  It’s not just about the complexion, but rather the interplay between complexion and physical appearance with racial identity,” explains Yaba Blay, PhD.

A New Orleans native, Blay’s impetus for starting such a venture spun from personal experience.  Growing up in a society with an undertone of racial consciousness, and a high population of Creoles and Mulattoes, Yaba had a heightened sense of racial politics within the Black community and the underlying sensitivities regarding skin color and racial identity…

…“As a professor, I teach my students about the concept of the Diaspora and that there are Black people of African descent all over the globe.  However, I guess there was some sort of separation for me between the theory and the practice.  As I was sitting on the panel, and Rosa [Clemente] was identifying as an African woman, I was thinking ‘but you’re Latina,’ and I was taken aback and fascinated by the concept that somebody who has the option to be something else, chose to identify as Black.”…

Read the entire article here.

True Londoners Are Extinct

The New York Times
2012-03-01

Craig Taylor

Photo by Mark Neville. Children come to the Somerford Grove Adventure Playground in Tottenham, shown here, after school or on weekends to learn life skills like cooking. “There’s a real sense of adulthood to what the children are doing there,” Neville said.

Later this year, thousands of Olympians will march into London under flapping flags, and the global TV audience will be treated to a romanticized version of the city, with helicopter shots of Big Ben competing for time against footage of Buckingham Palace guards staring stone-faced into the distance and double-decker buses bouncing unsteadily through too-narrow streets. By the end of the ceremonies, you’ll have seen the city’s bridges so many times that you’ll wish they had all fallen down years ago.

The overall impression these images are meant to give off is that London, for all its recent convulsions, is a city that remains preserved in its past, obsessed with its royals (the queen will celebrate her diamond jubilee in June) and populated by the type of cheeky folks mythologized in those postwar BBC social documentaries and kept alive by the likes of Guy Ritchie’s tired gangster clichés. Not Londoners. Lahndannahs.

But London in 2012, like most other global cities, is in significant flux, much less beholden to sepia-tinged notions of what it used to be and much more a product of its new arrivals. Over the last decade, the foreign-born population reached 2.6 million, just about a third of the city. In addition to longstanding Irish, Indian, Jamaican and Bangladeshi communities, there are now many new immigrants from Nigeria, Slovenia, Ghana, Vietnam and Somalia. I’ve seen Russians fly in on their private jets, and Eastern Europeans breach the city limits in cars filled to the roof with suitcases and potted plants…

Read the entire article here. View the slideshows here.

The Octoroon

The Georgetown Theatre Company
North, South, Race & Class: A Staged Reading Series of 19th century Plays at Grace Church
1041 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, 2012-02-29, 19:30 EST (Local Time)

The Octoroon (by Dion Boucicault) was one of the biggest hits of mid-19th century American theatre. It is the story of a beautiful mixed-race girl raised as white; when her father dies in debt, she is sold as property. Like the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Octoroon sensationalized the peril of a young slave woman at the hands of an evil white man. The play also serves as an apology for aristocratic slave-owners by presenting them as kindly and broad-minded, while the lower-class white characters were depicted as vicious, lecherous immigrants. These stereotypes persisted is Southern literature until well into the 20th century.

Portrait of Crimean War Nurse Mary Seacole Acquired by National Portrait Gallery

artdaily.org
2012-02-12

Mary Seacole by Albert Charles Challen, 1869. ^©National Portrait Gallery, London.

LONDON.- The only known painting of Mary Seacole, the black Victorian nurse regarded as one of the most significant figures to emerge from the Crimean War, is to remain at the National Portrait Gallery where it has been on loan since 2004. The iconic portrait has been bought for £130, 000 through a public appeal by the Gallery and a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant of £96,200.

Painted by Albert Challen in 1869, the portrait—which was discovered in 2004 by its owner, the biographer, writer and historian, Helen Rappaport—shows Seacole wearing the three medals which she was awarded for her service.

Born in Jamaica (c.1805 – 1881), Seacole was a nurse, adventurer and writer whose bravery, compassion and determination mark her as an exceptional figure in Victorian society. She travelled independently to Balaklava where she and her business partner, Thomas Day, opened the British Hotel between the harbour and British Headquarters. It served as an officers’ club, a canteen for troops and a base for her nursing activities. She remained in the Crimea until July 1856. She was a familiar figure to British newspaper readers through reports in The Times, Punch and elsewhere. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, was published in 1857 and sold well.

Since the 1970s, the development of a Black and Asian historiography has given her a central place in black British history. In 2004, Seacole was voted Greatest Black Briton in an online poll (http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/). As an inspirational figure in British history and with a growing reputation she has also begun to be regarded as an exemplary figure among all audiences regardless of ethnicity. With no formal training, nor from a wealthy middle-class background, Seacole overcame both racial and gender restrictions to establish herself as a notable humanitarian whose hands-on approach to nursing has become an inspiration to nurses today…

Read the entire article here.

MOsley WOtta Frontman Jason Graham to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #245 – Jason Graham
When: Wednesday, 2012-02-22, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 14:00 PST)

Jason Graham,

Steven F. Riley, Guest Host

Don’t miss this chat with Jason Graham aka MOsley WOtta—spoken word artist extraordinaire!

For more on Jason Graham, see:

• “Telling His Story, Keeping His Promises: MOsley WOtta as performer and father,” True North
• “‘MOsley WOtta’ Transcends Boundaries Of Music, Poetry And Art,” OPB News
• “MOsley WOtta,” video from Arts Beat Oregon
• “MFNW 2010: We are all MOsley WOtta,” Oregon Music News

[Note from Steven F. Riley: I’ll will be the first Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival donor to receive the gift of guest hosting Mixed Chicks Chat]

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

Performing Mulata-ness: The Politics of Cultural Authenticity and Sexuality among Carioca Samba Dancers

Latin American Perspectives
Volume 39, Number 2 (March 2012)
pages 113-133
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X11430049

Natasha Pravaz, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

In Rio de Janeiro, mulatas—brown-skinned women of mixed racial descent who dance the samba in Carnival parades and in nightclubs—have become multifocal symbols eliciting associations that resonate both with colonial morality and with mestiçagem, the narrative of racial and cultural mixing as a cornerstone of nationhood. Because of these associations, a dangerous border crossing takes place whenever they dance the samba in public: they may become icons of nationhood, but this may call into question their moral standing. Women who occupy this subject position attempt to maintain a modicum of respectability as they manipulate the objectifying gaze of Brazilians and foreigners to the best of their ability. They also attempt to portray their dance skills as culturally “authentic” in the search for legitimacy and racial pride. Ultimately, samba is a stage upon which the economic needs, embodied desires, and ethnic identities of Brazilian women clash and collude with the neo-colonial dreams of tourists and cosmopolitans.

Na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, as mulatas—mulheres de ascendência racial misturada que dançam o samba nos desfiles de carnaval e nas boites—se tornaram símbolos polivalentes que evocam associações ressonantes com a moralidade colonial e com o discurso da mestiçagem (mistura racial e cultural) comofundamento da brasilidade. Por causa destas associações, elas negociam um espaço perigoso cada vez que sambam em público: podem tornar-se símbolos da nação, mas isto pode gerar dúvidas sobre a sua reputação moral. As mulheres nesta posição social tentam manter um mínimo de respeito social através da manipulação dos olhares brasileiros e estrangeiros que as reificam. Em busca de legitimidade e orgulho racial, elas procuram definir suas habilidades artísticas comoculturalmente “autênticas.” Por fim, o samba é um palco onde as necessidades econômicas, os desejos encarnados e as identidades étnicas da mulher brasileira se embatem e conspiram com os sonhos neo-coloniais de turistas e cosmopolitas.

Read or purchase the article here.