“Not belonging” to any single ethnic group and its influence on self-identity formation: An exploratory, qualitative study of the multiracial experience

Posted in Dissertations, Identity Development/Psychology, New Media, Women on 2010-10-07 04:43Z by Steven

“Not belonging” to any single ethnic group and its influence on self-identity formation: An exploratory, qualitative study of the multiracial experience

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Fransisco
2010
150 pages
AAT 3407199
ISBN: 9781109754452

Malia Joiner

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology California Institute of Integral Studies

This qualitative inquiry explored the Multiracial woman’s experience of “not belonging” to any single ethnic group and the consequences for self-identity formation. Interview data were collected from self-identified Multiracial women, at least 18 years of age, who participated in semistructured interviews. Subjects were solicited through snowballing recruitment and searches at universities and websites geared toward Multiracial individuals.

The data were analyzed and grouped into themes according to phenomenological methods, with the goal of identifying common themes among women of Multiracial backgrounds in regard to their experiences around identity formation. The salient themes were (a) Phenotype, (b) Childhood Experiences, (c) Geographical Impact, (d) Sexuality and Self-Esteem, (e) Belonging, and (f) Identity Fluidity. These themes were found to be present in either the majority or all of the narratives, and were therefore likely indicative of a larger collective experience.

The limitations of this study were related to researcher bias and to the geographic and socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample. The sample was also skewed with higher levels of education as well as a strong representation of at least partial Asian ethnicity. Further research could attend to these limitations and build upon the results of this study.

Table of Contents

  • Abstract
  • Dedication
  • List of Tables
  • Chapter 1 Introduction
    • Background of the Problem
    • Statement of the Problem
    • Purpose of the Study
  • Chapter 2 Literature Review
    • Definition of Terms
      • Race
      • Ethnicity
      • Culture
      • Identity
    • Identity
      • Ethnic identity
        • Ethnic identity formation
          • Phinney’s developmental model of ethnic identity formation
          • Poston’s Biracial Identity Model
          • Kich’s Biracial Identity Development Model
        • Gender and identity formation
          • The Womanist Identity Development Model
          • The womanist consciousness approach
      • The Multiracial Experience
        • Power and guilt
        • Physical appearance
        • Sexualized stereotypes
        • Parental influence and family dysfunction
        • Otherness
      • Counseling Implications
  • Chapter 3 Methodology
    • Research Design
    • Data Collection and Participants
    • Data Analysis
    • Verification Procedures
  • Chapter 4 Findings
    • Participants
    • Themes
      • Phenotype
      • Childhood experiences
      • Geographical impact
      • Sexuality and self-esteem
      • Belonging
      • Identity fluidity
  • Chapter 5 Discussion and Recommendations
    • Discussion
      • Phenotype
      • Childhood experiences
      • Geographical impact
      • Sexuality and self-esteem
      • Belonging
      • Identity fluidity
    • Personal Assumptions and Their Relationship to the Findings
    • Limitations of the Study
    • Recommendations for Future Study
    • Clinical Implications
    • Summary
  • References
  • Appendix A Informed Consent to Participate in Research
  • Appendix B Sample Interview Questions
  • Appendix C Sample Interview Transcript
  • Appendix D Codes Resulting From Data Analysis Phase 2

Purchase the dissertation here.

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VIS409 Mixed Race Women’s Memoirs

Posted in Course Offerings, History, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-10-07 00:43Z by Steven

VIS409 Mixed Race Women’s Memoirs

Antioch University, Midwest
Winter 2010

This course is designed as a multidisciplinary exploration of race, gender, and identity utilizing oral and written narratives of Black-white mixed race women from the mid-nineteenth century to the present as source material. Drawing from elements of cultural studies, African American studies, American studies, and women’s studies, students will construct critical and historical contexts for self-identity and perceptions of that identity in women of interracial descent.

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Curriculum corner

Posted in Articles, Course Offerings, United States, Women on 2010-10-04 21:18Z by Steven

Curriculum corner

The Daily of The University of Washington
2010-10-01

Laurel Christensen

Despite talk of budget cuts, swelling classes and disappearing instructors, the UW is offering more than 50 new courses this quarter. These are a few unique courses now available to students…

Intergenerational Roots: A Mixed Heritage Family Oral History Project

Offered through the School of Social Work, Intergenerational Roots: A Mixed Heritage Family Oral History Project forgoes papers and exams to explore the history of mixed-heritage families directly by interviewing people of mixed race.

Instructor Theresa Ronquillo hopes that the course will teach students new skills in art, public relations, history, interviewing and event planning, as well as to help students understand the issues faced by the mixed-heritage community.

“I consider this very much a student-driven course, so while I am here to provide structure and guidance, my expectation is for participating students to take on the challenge and just go with it,” said Ronquillo.

Open to all students, this 1-credit course takes no more than 12 students per quarter.

Ronquillo hopes to work with students who have, “a willingness to learn new skills and [to] develop [and] engage in a creative, dynamic learning community.”

Taken over three quarters, this class is designed to be continuous, culminating in an oral history art exhibit at the end of the year. Each quarter can also be taken individually.

“Fall quarter will focus on student outreach, curriculum development and networking with potential university and community partners,” said Ronquillo. Winter and spring quarters will be more focused on interviewing, community art and event planning…

Read the entire article here.

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Essayist and Poet Paisley Rekdal to Read From Works at Ithaca College

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-10-03 02:28Z by Steven

Essayist and Poet Paisley Rekdal to Read From Works at Ithaca College

Ithaca College
Clark Lounge, Egbert Hall
2010-10-05, 19:30 (Local Time)

ITHACA, NY — Essayist and poet Paisley Rekdal will give a free public reading from her works on Tuesday, Oct. 5, at Ithaca College. Her presentation, part of the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series, will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Clark Lounge, Egbert Hall.

The daughter of a Chinese-American mother and an American father of Norwegian heritage, Rekdal is the author of “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee,” a collection of personal essays in which she confronts the difficulty of negotiating her biracial identity. She has also published three collections of poetry and will have a hybrid photo-text memoir that combines poems, nonfiction and fiction with photography, coming out from Tupelo Press in 2011.

Rekdal currently teaches at the University of Utah. She has been honored for her writing with a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, a Pushcart Prize, National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright fellowships, the University of Georgia Press’s Contemporary Poetry Series Award and the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review.

For more information, click here.

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The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Biography, Books, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Monographs, Women on 2010-10-03 02:27Z by Steven

The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In

Vintage an Imprint of Random House
2000
224 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-375-70855-8 (0-375-70855-3)
E-Book ISBN: 978-0-307-42908-7 (0-307-42908-3)

Paisley Rekdal, Professor of English and Asian Studies
University of Utah

When you come from a mixed race background as Paisley Rekdal does — her mother is Chinese American and her father is Norwegian– thorny issues of identity politics, and interracial desire are never far from the surface. Here in this hypnotic blend of personal essay and travelogue, Rekdal journeys throughout Asia to explore her place in a world where one’s “appearance is the deciding factor of one’s ethnicity.”

In her soul-searching voyage, she teaches English in South Korea where her native colleagues call her a “hermaphrodite,” and is dismissed by her host family in Japan as an American despite her assertion of being half-Chinese. A visit to Taipei with her mother, who doesn’t know the dialect, leads to the bitter realization that they are only tourists, which makes her further question her identity. Written with remarkable insight and clarity, Rekdal a poet whose fierce lyricism is apparent on every page, demonstrates that the shifting frames of identity can be as tricky as they are exhilarating.

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Mixed Is/Mixed Ain’t

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Passing, Women on 2010-09-30 17:47Z by Steven

Mixed Is/Mixed Ain’t

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2010-08-09

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim, Assistant Director, Multicultural Resource Center and Africana Community Coordinator
Oberlin College

…As someone who has never passed as anything other than black (and maybe a lil’ somethin’ else from time to time, but always black), I was surprised to find just how much of Birdie’s story resonated with me—the idea that our mixed bodies become at once the canvas and the mirror upon which others cast their perceptions of who we are. At the same time, I kept wanting to get inside Cole’s head. I wanted to hear her side of the story—the story of the sister “left behind”—the sister who’s “black” body could not be erased or so easily forgotten. Instead of feeling like Birdie, I found I felt much more like Cole. We only hear about Cole through Birdie and see her through Birdie’s eyes. Birdie seems envious of the ease with which her sister can pass through and into the black community, while she struggles to make her blackness visible. Ultimately, Birdie passes as white, Cole passes as black.

Lately, this idea of passing has been nagging me. Racial ambiguity and passing are big issues in our multi experiences, yet  are they prerequisites? How do our current conceptions of passing support the centering of white/non-white identities in the mixed community? Can we think of passing as multidirectional—not just passing as white, but also the ability to pass as black, Asian, Latin@ or even races/ethnicities we don’t identify with at all?…

Read the entire essay here.

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Hang Tough, Martina

Posted in Arts, Live Events, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-09-30 01:07Z by Steven

Hang Tough, Martina

Frear Ensemble Theatre
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
2004-02-27 through 2004-02-29
Saturday at 20:00, Sunday at 14:00

Composed and Performed By: Audrey Pernell
In Collaboration with: Vernice Miller and Jessica Nakamura
Directed by: Vernice Miller
Music: Ralph Denzer

The Department of Theater presents an honors thesis project by Audrey Pernell, directed by Vernice Miller as Artist-in-Residence. Hang Tough, Martina is a work in progress composed and performed by Audrey Pernell ’04 in collaboration with Vernice Miller and Jessica Nakamura ’03. It is an exploration of light-skinned black/biracial black-white identity using a fusion of European and African performance elements, made most evident through the characterization of a contemporary griot-opera-diva.

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Race-ing Performativity through Transculturation, Taste and the Mulata Body

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Women on 2010-09-29 17:58Z by Steven

Race-ing Performativity through Transculturation, Taste and the Mulata Body

Theatre Research International
Volume 27, Number 2 (2002)
pages 136-152
DOI: 10.1017/S0307883302000226

Alicia Arrizón, Professor of Women’s Studies
University of California, Riverside

A Cuban cocktail called mulata inspires an examination of the mulata body. Beyond an analysis of the cocktail as a commercial commodity, the mulata body can be placed within an intercultural space shaped by the processes of colonization, slavery and race relations. By examining the grammars in the mulata cocktail, the discussion moves the subject through other texts and discourses in order to mediate the mulata’s embodied genealogy as a form of transculturation. As a hybrid body that inhabits a ‘racialized’ performativity, the mulata’s subaltern agency is imagined beyond the exoticism charged to its presence in the Latin American and Caribbean contexts. A closer look at the mulata body helps to trace not only the process of objecthood affected by masculinist power and desire, but also by the way the process of subjecthood is performatively achieved.

Read or purchase the article here.

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Filling in the Chasm Between Black and White

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, Women on 2010-09-28 03:27Z by Steven

Filling in the Chasm Between Black and White

The Siskiyou
Southern Oregon University
2006-02-27

Shannon Luders-Manuel

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the lecture by James McBride, having read his memoir a few years ago when I was at my most-heightened search for identity. Without retaining much of the details of his life story, what has remained with me is the knowledge that someone else had experiences similar to my own. To know that he too struggled with feelings of shame over his white mother and questions over whether he, as a black child, had been adopted, brought down the wall of alienation I felt was between me and the rest of the world…

Read the entire article here.

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“Being a Half-breed”: Discourses of Race and Cultural Syncreticity in the Works of Three Metis Women Writers

Posted in Articles, Canada, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Women on 2010-09-26 20:29Z by Steven

“Being a Half-breed”: Discourses of Race and Cultural Syncreticity in the Works of Three Metis Women Writers

Canadian Literature
“Native, Individual, State”
Number 144, Spring, 1995
pages 82-96

Jodi Lundgren

In his introduction to All My Relations, Thomas King asserts that “being Native is a matter of race rather than something more transitory such as nationality”: “one is either born an Indian or one is not.” While King adds that there is no “racial denominator” among Natives and that it is important to “resist the temptation of trying to define a Native,” at least until the body of work by authors of Native ancestry reaches some sort of critical mass,” he contends that Indianness is an inborn genetic trait (x-xi). The danger of King’s position is elucidated by ethnohistorian James Clifton:

the uncritical use of Indian, White, and Black, and the associated ethnocentric assumptions about ancient differences in behaviour and potentialities, history, and culture effectively block analytic thinking. These historically derived, culturally patterned, institutionally reinforced convictions include such persistent ideas as being and becoming Indian is a matter largely of biological ancestry, that Indianness is fixed by blood. A related assumption is that the labels White and Indian mark sharply defined categories—culturally defined ways of sorting diverse people into a few classes. A further assumption is that these differences are primordial, inevitable, original, durable and natural. (23)

In other words, when race is considered anything more than an “accident of birth” (King xi), biological determinism soon follows and is inevitably used to justify and perpetuate the disempowerment of oppressed groups. Historically, as Noel Elizabeth Currie asserts, Europeans constructed the different “races’ they encountered in their colonialist and imperialist ventures as “inferior” and “savage’ in order to exploit them economically; contemporary Canadian society, internalized racism is a key element in Native people’s oppression. Beatrice Culleton’s novel April Raintree demonstrates the way in which a light-skinned Metis girl, for whom assimilation into white society appears a possibility, is convinced by her teachers, foster family, and social workers that Native people are responsible for their own disempowerment and that their social positioning is unalterable. Growing up isolated from any Metis community, April Raintree perceives her options as dichotomous: either become the drunken Indian Other or assimilate. In contrast, Maria Campbell’s autobiography Halfbreed illustrates the validating effects of having been raised in a family with a strong sense of Metis identity. Situating the Metis historically, Campbell characterizes their identity as a cultural construct; her emphasis is thus on ethnicity rather than race. In I Am Woman and Sojourner’s Truth, Lee Maracle too focusses not on race but on cultural heritage and political disempowerment as determinant of Metis experience. Hybrid by definition, Metis identity is predicated upon what is “an inescapable and characteristic feature of all post-colonial societies,” namely, cultural syncreticity (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 30). Thus, a positivist emphasis on race such as that put forth by Thomas King is peculiarly problematic for the Metis. That racial stereotyping has had a devastating impact on the Metis and other Native peoples is, however, undeniable. Its operation is thoroughly explored in April Raintree

Read the entire article here.

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