Mixed Race Studies

Native Guard: Poems

Mariner Books an Imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2007-04-03
64 pages
Trim Size: 5.50 x 8.25
Paperback ISBN-13/EAN: 9780618872657; ISBN-10: 0618872655

Natasha Trethewey, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing
Emory University

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Through elegiac verse that honors her mother and tells of her own fraught childhood, Natasha Trethewey confronts the racial legacy of her native Deep South—where one of the first black regiments, the Louisiana Native Guards, was called into service during the Civil War. Trethewey’s resonant and beguiling collection is a haunting conversation between personal experience and national history.

Excerpt:

Miscegenation

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong – mis in Mississippi.

A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.

Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year – you’re the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name –
though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.

Born a Half-Caste

Aboriginal Studies Press
1990 (revised edition)
78 pages
210 x1 50mm, b/w illus
Paperback ISBN: 9780855751609

Margaret (Marnie) Kennedy (1919–1985)

Marnie Kennedy was born in 1919 ‘on the bank of Coppermine Creek’. Her story takes us from her birthplace in Western Queensland, to Palm Island where she grew up ‘under the Act’, and back to western Queensland where she spent all of her hard-working life on cattle stations. It is a story of quiet courage and determination, dedicated ‘to my mother, my children and grandchildren, and my people’.

When Half Is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities

Stanford University Press
September 2012
248 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9780804775175
Paper ISBN: 9780804775182

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Stanford University

“I listen and gather people’s stories. Then I write with the hope to communicate something to people, that they gain something of value by reading these stories. I tell myself that this is something that isn’t going to be done unless I do it, just because of who I am. It’s a way of making my mark, to leave something behind—not that I’m planning on going anywhere, right now.”

So begins Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu in this touching, introspective, and insightful exploration of mixed race Asian American experiences. The son of an Irish American father and Japanese mother, Murphy-Shigematsu has devoted his life to understanding himself as a product of his diverse roots. Across twelve chapters, his reflections are interspersed among profiles of others of biracial and mixed ethnicity and accounts of their journeys to answer a seemingly simple question: Who am I?

Here we meet Margo, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a black American serviceman, who found how others viewed and treated her, both in Japan and the United States, in conflict with her evolving understanding of herself. Born in Australia and raised in San Francisco, Wei Ming struggled with making sense of her Chinese and American heritage, which was further complicated when she began to realize she was bisexual. Rudy, the son of Mexican and Filipino parents, is a former gang member and hip hop artist who redirected his passion for performance into his current career as a professor of Asian Pacific American Studies. Other chapters address issues such as mixed race invisibility, being a transracial adoptee, hapa identity, beauty culture and authenticity testing, and more.

With its attention on people who have been regarded as “half” this or “half” that throughout their lives, these stories make vivid the process of becoming whole.

Contents

• Prologue
• 1. Flowers Amidst the Ashes
• 2. We Must Go On
• 3. For the Community
• 4. English, I Dont Know!
• 5. Bi Bi Girl
• 6. I Am Your Illusion, Your Reality Your Future
• 7. Grits and Sushi
• 8. I Cut across Borders as If They Have No Meaning
• 9. Victims No More
• 10. American Girl in Asia
• 11. Found in Translation
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Recommended Readings
• About the Author

Brown Eyes: A Selection of Creative Expressions by Black and Mixed Race Women

Troubador Publishing
2006
292 pages
5 x 0.6 x 8 inches
ISBN 10: 1905237146; ISBN-13: 978-1905237142

Edited by:

Nicole Moore

Brown Eyes is a rare collection of poetry and autobiographical writing from a diverse group of black and mixed-race women—everyday women expressing themselves in their own unique and readable style. One of the first anthologies of its kind, Brown Eyes offers a fresh and challenging insight into the lives of black and mixed-race women in 21st century Britain.

As well as being an important contribution towards Black British literature, the book celebrates, reflects upon and embraces our diverse female identities and the common-thread that unites all of us living the UK experience.

Some of the contributions explode with energy, others speak with softness, many discuss childhood, motherhood, love, while others deal with loss and historical betrayal. The voices collected in Brown Eyes range from teenage to mature, rural and urban, from mothers and daughters, and countless others, all contributing to this anthology’s diverse creativity.

Don’t Call Me Hapa

ricepaper: Asian Canadian Arts and Culture
Issue 16.3 (Fall 2011) The Hybrid Issue

Arron Leaf

THERE WAS A MOMENT IN HIGH SCHOOL when I was fascinated with mixed-race identity and the word “Hapa.” Using this Hawaiian term meaning “half” as in “half-white” to describe myself felt empowering, somehow. My mom is Malaysian and my dad is American and, yes, the cliché of mixed-race kids held true for me: Who am I? Where do I fit in?
 
Through my brand-new internet connection I learned that “Hapa” had been adopted by activists trying to fashion a sense of community and identity out of a new generation of mixed-race Asian kids. At the time, about a decade ago, I was listening to rap music about identity politics, black nationalism, and authenticity. In my grade 11 history class I was learning about colonization and the upheavals of the 20th century. I desperately needed to come from somewhere; I needed an identity to anchor myself, and “Hapa” seemed like a way to do that.
 
But the moment soon passed…

Read the entire article here.

Lives: A Final Message From My Mother

The New York Times
2012-07-20

Josiah Howard

The first note I ever wrote for my mother wasn’t very special, but she seemed to think it was. It said: “Hi Mom! Have a nice day! Love Skip!” (her nickname for me). My message was scribbled on a scrap of paper and tucked discreetly into her change purse. At the time I wrote it, I was 12. My mother worked as a key-punch operator — a profession now obsolete — at the Piscataway, N.J., offices of Phillips Van Heusen, the clothing company.

When my mom was working, she ate her lunch while smoking her unfiltered Pall Malls in the Van Heusen cafeteria. I knew that when she purchased her meal, she would have to rifle through her purse for change, so that’s where I placed my note. I didn’t know that she would keep that note, laminate it and always carry it with her…

…My mom’s name was Gail Ann Blackmer. She was an unwed mother. I am her only child. The challenges we faced together, first in New York City and then in New Jersey, were, as it turned out, largely a result of the difference in our skin colors, a fact that meant little to me. My mother told me that once when I was very young, she asked if I noticed that she and I were different colors. My response was delivered with flat, round-eyed authority: “Mothers don’t come in colors.”

But they do. And my mother’s being white and my being black presented many challenges. She didn’t often speak about our early years together (or her experience of them), but whatever she revealed was indelibly stamped in my mind. The indignities stand out: once while entering a bus, a white man spied us and snarled, “What’s the matter, couldn’t you get a white one?” On another occasion she rented an apartment and then, when she showed up with a black child, was turned away. I often wonder about my mom’s unconventional (pre-Civil Rights) life choices, and I wonder how she came to make them. It was a topic that she never discussed…

Read the entire article here.

Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival

University of Nebraska Press
2004
206 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8032-1527-6

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

“A name creates life patterns,” Allison Adelle Hedge Coke writes, “which form and shape a life; my life, like my name, must have been formed many times over then handed to me to realize.” Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer is Hedge Coke’s narrative of that realization, the award-winning poet and writer’s searching account of her life as a mixed-blood woman coming of age off-reservation, yet deeply immersed in her Cherokee and Huron heritage. In a style at once elliptical and achingly clear, Hedge Coke describes her schizophrenic mother and the abuse that often overshadowed her childhood; the torments visited upon her, the rape and physical violence; and those she inflicted on herself, the alcohol and drug abuse. Yet she managed to survive with her dreams and her will, her sense of wonder and promise undiminished.

The title Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer refers to the life-revelations that brought Hedge Coke through her trials, the melding of language and experience that has brought order to her life. In this book, Hedge Coke shares the insights she has gathered along the way, insights that touch on broader Native issues such as modern life in the diaspora; the threat of alcohol, drug abuse, and violence; and the ongoing onslaught on self amid a complex, mixed heritage.

Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Of Seeds
• 2. From Winds
• 3. When Fire and Water Meet
• 4. Ashes
• 5. Back to the Lands
• 6. Oceans, Rivers
• 7. Crossings

Double Native: A moving memoir about living across two cultures

University of Queensland Press
2012-01-03
304 pages
ISBN: 978 0 7022 3917 5

Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung

Growing up ‘on country’ on the west coast of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula in the 1970s and ’80s, Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung had an idyllic traditional life. At the age of 16, she decided to pursue her dream of performing and moved to Sydney to attend the NAISDA Dance College. There she studied with the legendary Page brothers before they founded Bangarra Dance Theatre and met her future husband and father of her three daughters.

But the missing piece of her life was her father. As a young woman, she finds her father and carves out a fragile relationship with him. This inspires her to better understand her Austrian ancestry and how it meshes with her Indigenous identity.

Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung is the model of a modern woman: mother and professional; performer and creator; teacher and student, urban dweller and remote community inhabitant. As such she shares the joys and challenges that come with growing up in a divided community and carving out a career as a solo parent.

Double Native is a powerful and candid memoir that offers a rare insight into the burgeoning years of the contemporary Indigenous dance movement and what it means to straddle two cultures.

What I’ve learned from living with HIV

The Melissa Harris-Perry Blog
2012-07-01

Macalester College

Ed. note: This is a guest column by our guest today, Christopher MacDonald-Dennis, the Dean of Multicultural Life at Macalester College. Chris normally tweets this essay out every December 1 to commemorate World AIDS Day, but was kind enough to allow us to share it in this space.

My name is Chris, and I live with HIV.

I know some were here last year [on my Twitter timeline], so I’ll try not to bore you. I just want to remind us that we are here among you, living, thriving, sometimes barely surviving w HIV/AIDS. I’d like to tell my story: why I made choices I did and what I’ve learned-because I have learned a great deal about myself from this disease.

To start: I have been positive for 15 years. March 10, 2010 was  my anniversary. I am 41 years old. In fact, I was born exactly 1 week before Stonewall rebellion in NYC. I was born and raised in a working-class Boston neighborhood. I grew up in uber-dysfunctional family: brother diagnosed as sociopath in teens, dad an alcoholic, mom mentally ill. It was hell in that family, I was a little “sissy” who knew at early age he was gay. I was OK with it but knew others wouldn’t be. I was terrorized as kid-ass kicked a lot. My city didn’t like “femme” boys. Also, I am mixed: dad was white, mom Latina…long before mixed folks were cool. We just were odd. So I grew up alone, and lonely…

Read the entire essay here.

Re-searching Metis Identity: My Metis Family Story

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon
April 2010
200 pages

Tara Turner

A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Psychology

This research explores Metis identity through the use of a Metis family story. The participants of this Metis family were my father and his two sisters and his two brothers. As children, they lost both their parents at the same time in a car accident. After the death of their parents my participants all encountered the child welfare system, through adoption, orphanage, and foster care. Through adoption, the two youngest participants were separated from their siblings, and any knowledge of their Metis heritage, until they were adults. Individual interviews were conducted with each participant to gather their life stories. Two additional gatherings of the participants were completed in order to share individual and family stories. The second and final gathering was conducted as a talking circle. A culturally congruent qualitative research process was created with the use of stories, ceremonies, and the strengthening of family relationships. Analysis was completed with the use of Aboriginal storytelling guidelines. The themes examined through my family’s story include trauma, the child welfare system, and Metis identity. A significant piece of the research process was the creation of a ‘Metis psychological homeland’ (Richardson, 2004, p. 56), a psychological space of both healing and affirming Aboriginal identity. This dissertation is an example of how research can be completed in a way that does not perpetuate the mistrust between Aboriginal people and researchers, and that works to improve this relationship.

Read the entire dissertation here.