#RedefineAtoZ: Blasian Narratives, a ‘Vulnerable’ Exploration Into Racial, Cultural Identities

Posted in Articles, Arts, Asian Diaspora, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2017-05-04 02:22Z by Steven

#RedefineAtoZ: Blasian Narratives, a ‘Vulnerable’ Exploration Into Racial, Cultural Identities

NBC News
2017-05-01


Blasian Narratives is a “multi-media docu-theatre project that takes an intimate look into the lives of Black and Asian individuals to explore the constructs of racial and cultural identities, and to explore difference and marginalization in the United States and beyond.” Paulo Chun / NBC News

NAME: Jivan Atman (creator, director); active cast: Julian Booker, Marlon Booker, Cenisa Gavin, Shiranthi Goonathilaka, Janei Maynard, Chris Sanders

(Past and recent contributors: Jessica Lam, Malcolm Lizzappi, Audrey Williams, Fredrick Cloyd, Paula Reyna Williams, Whitney Francis, Charon Cummings, Sabrina Im)

AGES: Early and late 20’s, a 40-something and 60-something

HOMETOWNS: Phnom Pehn, Cambodia; Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; Atlanta, Georgia; Oakland, California; San Francisco, California; San Diego, California; Long Beach, California; London, UK; St. Paul, Minnesota; Westminster, California; Houston, Texas; Aurora, Colorado; Sarasota, Florida

TWITTER: @blasianproject / INSTAGRAM: @blasianproject / FACEBOOK: Blasian Narratives…

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‘Blasian Narratives’ struggles with the question: Black enough? Asian enough?

Posted in Articles, Arts, Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, United States on 2016-08-21 21:35Z by Steven

‘Blasian Narratives’ struggles with the question: Black enough? Asian enough?

Kore Asian Media
2016-08-16

Tae Hong


“Blasian Narratives” performs inside Stanford Theatre. (Harrison Troung/Courtesy photo)

Teaching third graders in an underserved area of Brooklyn, Cenisa Gavin often looks out at her mostly black and Latino students and is reminded of the failings of her own teachers when it came to discussions about race and identity.

Gavin, 23, is black on her father’s side, and Korean Eskimo on her mother’s side. She has long, thick hair and, by her own description, slanted eyes. Growing up as a mixed-race child in Anchorage, Alaska, was one thing – she could never, for one, converse with her Korean great-grandmother because of a language barrier, and that was always the way it had been for her family – but coming across the term “Blasian” as a high schooler, and then joining a group of them to talk about her heritage as black and Asian on a theater stage at Spelman College years later, was another.

“I think my teachers did us a disservice by not discussing what it is to be colorblind, and how being colorful is greater than that,” Gavin said. When she told her students about her mixed race last year, she said, and when they saw her black father, the kids were surprised: “They said, ‘Ms. Gavin’s dad is black? You’re black?’”

This is one of the themes carried in the stories told by the seven-member group with which Gavin has now starred in a film project, “Blasian Narratives,” started by Cambodian American director Omnes “Canon” Senmos and looking toward release this fall…

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