Mixed Race Studies

How Tessa Thompson Became A Modern Marvel

BuzzFeed
2016-07-20

Anita Badejo, Associate Features Editor

At a time when Hollywood is finally developing the kinds of projects for actors of color that had traditionally been out of reach, Tessa Thompson’s ascent to the A-list isn’t just welcome — it’s necessary. How can she embody this pivotal cultural moment without being defined by it?

Tessa Thompson has a problem. “I really like to be good at things,” she says, reclining in a rich brown leather chair in the Library bar of Manhattan’s NoMad Hotel. It’s a Sunday afternoon in March, and Thompson is wearing a sheer black blouse with gold-chained collar pins and high-waisted acid-wash jeans. “It’s an impediment sometimes.”

The idea that the 32-year-old could be impeded by anything seems unlikely. In the past two years, she has been touted as Hollywood’s Next Big Thing based on performances in films such as the indie darling Dear White People, the historical drama Selma, and November’s box office hit Creed, and she has parlayed those successes into at least three potentially life-changing upcoming roles. “To be really bad in the beginning and to risk being bad every time and just continually be compelled to want to be good and better?” she says, her Ts aspirated in the manner of a lifelong performer. “Acting is the only thing I was able to push through that.”

And, as Thompson acknowledges, the roles she’s had a particular knack for so far have tackled complicated issues of race and gender — all befitting the multiracial actress, who peppers her musings with references to everyone from bell hooks to Laurence Olivier. “Whatever alchemy it is, those are the kind of parts that I’m going to be better at.”…

Read the entire article here.

Half-Caste Actresses in Colonial Brazilian Opera Houses

Latin American Theatre Review
Volume 45, Number 2, Spring 2012
pages 57-71
DOI: 10.1353/ltr.2012.0016

Rosana Marreco Brescia
Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Operatic and theatrical historians in both Brazil and Portugal frequently mention that around the last quarter of the 18th century, Queen Maria I forbade women to perform on public stages in Portugal. However, it seems that the impresarios and owners of opera houses in colonial Brazil were unaware of this prohibition, since I have found several references to actresses performing in many of the permanent theatres at the end of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century. The great majority of these actresses were half-caste women. The most remarkable example is the case of soprano Joaquina Lapinha, prima donna of the Opera Nova in Rio de Janeiro, and probably the only native Luso-American singer to perform in a European theatre in the 18th century. This article considers the employment of actresses in the opera houses of São Paulo, Vila Rica, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre, showing how the impresarios of these public theatres managed to provide their companies with the necessary human resources.

Taraji P. Henson Is a Math Genius in ‘Hidden Figures’ First Trailer

Variety
2016-08-15

Dave McNary, Film Reporter

Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae break the glass ceiling — among other barriers — in the first trailer for the NASA drama “Hidden Figures,” which debuted Sunday night during the Rio Olympics.

The teaser opens with Henson’s Katherine Johnson character as a young girl, filling up a classroom blackboard with mathematical formulas, prompting her teacher to tell her parents, “I’ve never seen a mind like your daughter has.”…

In addition to Henson, Spencer portrays Dorothy Vaughan and Monae plays Mary Jackson as a trio of brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind the 1962 launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit — a stunning achievement that turned around the Space Race…

Read the entire article here.

A Biography Of E. Azalia Smith Hackley (1867-1922), African-american Singer And Social Activist

Edwin Mellen Press
2001
436 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7734-7575-5

Lisa Pertillar Brevard, Core Faculty and Academic Coordinator of Humanities
Walden University

Madame E. Azalia Hackley was an African American classical singer, social worker, writer, philanthropist, and activist who championed the use of African-American spirituals among the African-American people as a tool for social change. Her efforts laid the groundwork for the use of spirituals as freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. This work used newspaper accounts and archive studies documenting Madame Hackley’s tours cross-country and abroad to raise funds for African-American classical musicians. It show Hackley’s intense devotion to her African-American roots, as she easily could have passed for white. Nevertheless, she traveled throughout the South in ‘Jim Crow’ railway cars by choice. This work also recovers several of her influential published works, including A Guide to Voice Culture (1909); The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916), an etiquette book for African-American women desiring professional jobs; and “Hints to Young Colored Artists”, a series of articles designed to help young African-American classical musicians succeed. Includes illustrations.

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Richard A. Long
• Introduction
• Part I: Madame Emma Azalia Smith Hackley: The Lady and Her Legacy
  • 1. Azalia’s Early Years (1867-1894)
  • 2. Denver (1894-1900)
  • 3. Philadelphia and The Washington Conservatory of Music (1900-1915)
  • 4. Jim Crow Cars and Beyond – Paris, London, Tokyo (1916-1920)
  • 5. Madame Hackley’s Last Days (1920-1922)
• Part II: The Soul and Grit of a Colored Prima Donna: Madame E. Azalia Hackley as Journalist
  • “Hints to Young Colored Artists” (1914-15) by E. Azalia Hackley
• Part III: Lessons Before Dying: Madame Hackley’s The Colored Girl Beautiful
• Part IV: A Scrapbook of Madame E. Azalia Hackley
  • Photographs
  • “Report on Scholarship for 1908” by E. Azalia Hackley
  • Correspondence Between E. Azalia Hackley and James Weldon Johnson
  • Advertisements
  • The New York Age Salutes Madame Hackley (Obituary by Lucien H. White, 1922)
• Chronology
• Appendix: A Guide in Voice Culture (1909) by E. Azalia Hackley
• Sheet Music: “Carola, A Serenade” (1918) by E. Azalia Hackley
• Bibliography
• Index

Photograph by Julius Taylor

Half-Asian Tattooers Use Art To Confront Mixed Race Stereotypes

Konbini
2016-08-04

Morgan English

Five Asian-Canadian artists (some female, some genderqueer) have joined forces for a new exhibit that explores what it means to be half-Asian in the west.

Of the crew, four are also tattooers: Nomi Chi, Mandy Tsung, Shannon Elliott and Katie So. Their fifth, Lauren Ys, has made a name for herself in street art, among other things. Their tattoo work often serves as an outlet to push back on stereotypes, express individualism, and even heal the wounds of other people of colour…

Read the entire article here.

Where Hip Hop Fits in Cuba’s Anti-Racist Curriculum

The Atlantic
2016-08-01

Erik Gleibermann

The country’s education leaders confront deep-seated discrimination in the classroom through rap.

I was sitting with the Afrocentric rapstress Magia López Cabrera in her modest Havana walk-up in June when Cuba’s prominent black-history scholar Tomás Fernández Robaina showed up for a café con leche. Her tiny living room was filled with African folk art and images of women with 1970s-style Afros. It felt like the Cuban equivalent of Cornel West dropping in on Queen Latifah. Two nights later at an anniversary celebration for López’s rap-duo Obsesión, Fernández Robaina sat discussing racial profiling in the U.S. with Roberto Zurbano Torres, widely known in the U.S. for his writing on Cuban racial issues.

Since arriving in Havana several weeks before to investigate Cuba’s work to eliminate racism, I had discovered a collaborative, tight-knit movement that’s gone largely unpublicized in the U.S., including in its six-time-zone, decentralized academic world. In Havana, community artists like Lopez, academics like Fernández, and members of the National Ministry of Education are collectively exploring how to integrate Afro-Cuban history and related gender concerns into the primary-through-university school system. It’s hard to imagine a U.S. parallel, such as Secretary of Education John King officially asking teachers to teach students a song like “Le Llaman Puta” (They Call Her Whore)—López’s critique of how Afro-Cuban women are driven into prostitution—to fulfill the Common Core standards.

Efforts to combat racism in Cuba—which is widely believed to be majority nonwhite—through education have emerged quietly over the last several years. The National Ministry of Education officially leads the way through the Aponte Commission, where Fernández has served, exploring how to remove traces of racially denigrating language and imagery from, and include more Afro-Cuban history in, school textbooks. But the bold efforts are coming from below. A few semi-independent universities in Havana, and regional centers like Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba, and Camagüey, are taking the initiative, along with grassroots educators and activists involved in a hip-hop movement spearheaded by Obsesión…

Read the entire article here.

Zawe Ashton interview: The actress is moving on from Fresh Meat with a starring role in Channel 4’s comedy drama Not Safe for Work

The Independent
2015-06-19

Gillian Orr

Multi-talented: Ashton likes to do her own thing Immo Klink

Acting, directing, writing: Zawe Ashton is a woman on the move. Gillian Orr tries to keep up

I’ve only just been introduced to Zawe Ashton and she turns to me and whispers, “Let’s make a run for it!” The actress has been holed up in her publicist’s office for the past few hours. Her minders are just out of earshot. “I need some natural light,” she says as we scarper out the front door and head down a Soho street to a cafe. “I’m going to get into so much trouble,” she laughs.

Ashton is very much a woman on the move. And she likes to do her own thing. We might know her best for her portrayal of the wannabe punk Vod in Channel 4’s student-life sitcom Fresh Meat but there is far more to her than acting. She also directs, produces, and writes. Over the past decade she’s been energetic in theatre and film, and soon she’s going to be published. There’s just no holding her back, and here she is again, coffee ordered, keeping one step ahead.

She is down from Manchester, where she’s been filming the fourth – and final – series of Fresh Meat. Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong’s brilliant creation has helped turn Ashton into one of television’s most striking new actresses, but now she is moving on. A new Channel 4 comedy drama – Not Safe for Work, which begins at the end of the month – is going to show Ashton in a very different light.

Following the chaotic personal and professional lives of a group of dysfunctional government employees who have been forced to relocate from London to Northampton, Not Safe for Work sees Ashton playing Katherine, a recently divorced woman coming to terms with her displacement from the capital and having to live in a flatshare at an age when she thought she’d be having babies…

…Later that year she also won the award for Best Breakthrough On-Screen Talent at the Creative Diversity Network for her work in Fresh Meat. With Vod, just as it is with Katherine, the fact that Ashton is mixed race is never made out to be an issue that needs to be addressed in storylines. It simply isn’t mentioned. Anyone of any ethnicity could have played these characters. Was that a sense that she had strived to achieve? “I’m glad it seems effortless,” she says. “It’s something that I’ve worked really hard at. I think I’ve always felt that I want to do a very specific type of work and I’ve made informed decisions. You know, hopefully be part of a quiet movement or revolution.” She pauses to giggle. “Without sounding too Che Guevara about it.”

She says that as a child she would hand back scripts to her mother and tell her that she didn’t like how certain characters were represented. At the same time, she doesn’t want her background to be ignored. “I don’t want to be ‘de-ethnicised’. I hate it when people say, ‘Oh I don’t even think of you as a woman’, or, ‘I don’t even think of you as a black woman.’ Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread? But any actor of any race can tell if a part is well written or not. It’s really just about reading stuff that feels well-observed and truthful.”…

Read the entire article here.

Skin Deep Meets Stella Corradi

Skin Deep: Race + Culture
London, England, United Kingdom
2016-07-08

Anuradha Henriques, Editor

East London writer and director Stella Corradi talks fantasy, addiction and her short film “Little Soldier”

Stella Corradi, East London born and bred, is the writer and director behind the short film Little Soldier. Loosely influenced by Corradi’s own personal childhood and memories, Little Soldier tells of the power of a child’s imagination to overcome her reality. It addresses that tempestuous and deeply instinctive love between a mother and child and how that love transcends any obstacle or circumstance.

The film was selected through Film London’s London Calling scheme in 2015 out of hundreds of submissions, and has recently been awarded a Special Jury Mention Award by Film London. The film has also been nominated for the Best UK Short at the East End Film Festival 2016. Corradi is a force to be reckoned with.

I was lucky enough to work with Stella on a film shoot in London over the last few weeks. Most days after work she would give me a lift home and we would talk about food, politics and UK grime and garage. I recorded this interview in the car on one of those journeys, whilst she navigated the lane drifters on the A40…

…AH: What is the film about?

SC: The film is about a ten year old girl, Anya, who lives with her mother who suffers from addiction. Anya is working for her mother’s boyfriend, Derek, who comes between them. To protect her mother and her home, she has to get rid of Derek. She uses her imagination to deal with this reality, to give her power and agency…

…AH: In inner city London you can’t separate class from race. The majority of working class people in London are people of colour. So your casting, whether conscious or not, is a reflection of this intersection of class and race.

SC: Yes, I agree. But at first I subconsciously intended to cast a little girl who has a similar background to me. Because it was a personal story I subconsciously pictured myself in the role of Anya but when I met the right actress to play Anya, it did occur to me that the film would take on other connotations to do with class, race, interdependency and that’s how films grow really. The way you cast brings on other layers and I love what the actors brought to my film. The mixed race experience in London is transmitted visually through Amaris [Miller] and Zawe [Ashton] and in my opinion adds to the narrative, it does not complicate it. Derek, Anya and Amanda are a bi-racial family unit…

Read the entire interview here.

Dido Belle: Britain’s first black aristocrat

The Telegraph
2016-07-06

Nisha Lilia Diu

Amma Asante’s award-winning film Belle arrives on Netflix today. In this feature, first published in June 2014, Nisha Lilia Diu reveals the true story that inspired it

The amazing thing about Dido Elizabeth Belle is not that she was mixed-race. Who knows how many white men’s children were born to black slave women in the 18th century? It’s not even that her father was a wealthy English aristocrat – there were plenty of titled captains tearing around the Caribbean at that time, capturing French and Dutch schooners during the Seven Years’ War and making off with their sugar, coffee and other (often human) cargo. The extraordinary thing about Dido Belle is that her father, a 24-year-old Navy officer called John Lindsay, took her home to England and asked his extended family to raise her. And they did. They did it in some style, too.

Belle grew up in Kenwood House in north London. It was the palatial weekend retreat of Lindsay’s uncle, the first Earl of Mansfield, set in landscaped gardens with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral six miles away. Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and he made a number of landmark rulings on slavery that were among Britain’s first steps towards abolition. Did Belle’s presence in his home have anything to do with it? Plenty of his contemporaries thought so, and they didn’t admire him for it.

“Dido was very, very privileged,” says William Murray, a descendant of the earl and the son of the heir apparent. “She was in the top 5 per cent, perhaps the top 1 per cent, in terms of how she lived, her allowance, her dress, her education.” But Belle’s position was far from clear-cut…

Read the entire article here.

Akala: Dynamite by any other name…

The Guardian
2013-06-01

Kate Mossman, Editor and Pop critic
New Statesman

Akala in Notting Hill last month: ‘In Brixton and Tottenham my sister was worshipped because she was representing a side of intellectual black culture that is never usually acknowledged.’ Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer

Rapper, adapter of Shakespeare and brother of Ms Dynamite, Akala is on a mission to correct a few misconceptions

A few weeks ago in these pages, Birmingham rapper Lady Leshurr asked why there had been no high-profile female rappers in the UK since Ms Dynamite. Akala seems a good person to consult – one, because he’s her brother, and two, because you can ask Akala just about anything and you’ll get a pretty comprehensive answer. In the course of 68 minutes in a London community centre under the Westway, he talks about 16th-century explorers, Biggie Smalls, the universities of 13th-century Timbuktu, tai chi, the Black Wall Street of Oklahoma, the African city portraits of Olfert Dapper, Eminem, peanuts, Napoleon’s generals, traffic lights and golf. But back to Ms Dynamite.

“I remember the Daily Mail wrote an article about my sister at the time,” he says, “and essentially their argument was, ‘Well, she’s not really black, is she – she’s quite clever and she’s got a white mum!’ It was so funny the way they tried to co-opt us. Remember that big story about Bob Marley and his ‘white dad’ last year? He was unequivocally black power, but he’s rewritten as this fun-loving Rasta. Mark Duggan [the Tottenham man shot by police in August 2011] was also mixed race, but no one’s ever going to co-opt Mark Duggan!”…

Read the entire article here.