Mixed Race Studies

Why We Shouldn’t Compare Transracial to Transgender Identity

Boston Review: A Political and Literary Forum
2020-11-18

Robin Dembroff, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Yale University

Dee Payton, Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

From left: Jessica Krug, Nkechi Amare Diallo (née Rachel Dolezal), Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox

Editors’ Note: This essay is the first installment in a new series, Racial Identity & Racial Fraud.

Unlike gender inequality, racial inequality primarily accumulates across generations. Transracial identification undermines collective reckoning with that injustice.

“Call me Caitlyn.” With this phrase, emblazoned on Vanity Fair’s June 2015 cover, Caitlyn Jenner revealed her transgender identity to the world. But these words were not only a revelation; they also were a demand. Most obviously, they demanded that others call Jenner by a new name. But even more importantly, they demanded that others recognize Jenner as having a certain identity: woman.

Reactions to this demand were predictable. Jenner was warmly embraced and lauded by many for her decision to—as Jenner put it—live as her “authentic self.” Transgender activist and writer Laverne Cox wrote that Jenner’s “courage to move past denial into her truth so publicly . . . [is] beyond beautiful to me.” President Barack Obama, retweeting Jenner’s announcement, praised her “courage to share [her] story.” Hundreds of thousands of others left encouraging comments on Jenner’s social media. Within these reactions, an idea repeatedly surfaced: Jenner’s demand for recognition as a woman is legitimate because Jenner is a woman…

Read the entire article here.

Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afrolatinx Cultures

Columbia University Press
March 2020
272 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780231194334
Hardcover ISBN: 9780231194327
E-book ISBN: 9780231550765

Solimar Otero, Professor of Folklore
Indiana University, Bloomington

In Afrolatinx religious practices such as Cuban Espiritismo, Puerto Rican Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé, the dead tell stories. Communicating with and through mediums’ bodies, they give advice, make requests, and propose future rituals, creating a living archive that is coproduced by the dead. In this book, Solimar Otero explores how Afrolatinx spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race.

Otero argues that what she calls archives of conjure are produced through residual transcriptions or reverberations of the stories of the dead whose archives are stitched, beaded, smoked, and washed into official and unofficial repositories. She investigates how sites like the ocean, rivers, and institutional archives create connected contexts for unlocking the spatial activation of residual transcriptions. Drawing on over ten years of archival research and fieldwork in Cuba, Otero centers the storytelling practices of Afrolatinx women and LGBTQ spiritual practitioners alongside Caribbean literature and performance. Archives of Conjure offers vital new perspectives on ephemerality, temporality, and material culture, unraveling undertheorized questions about how spirits shape communities of practice, ethnography, literature, and history and revealing the deeply connected nature of art, scholarship, and worship.

Jackie Kay International Conference

Gylphi Contemporary Writers
February 2020

Liverpool, England, United Kingdom
2020-05-06
Contact: kay.conference@gylphi.co.uk

Organisers:

Natasha Alden, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British Fiction
University of Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom

Fiona Tolan, Senior Lecturer in English
Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Keynote speaker:

Deidre Osborne, Reader in English Literature and Drama
Goldsmiths, University of London

Jackie Kay is the author of some 30 works, including plays, poetry, prose (fiction and non-fiction), children’s literature, short stories and a ground-breaking novel. She has won or been shortlisted for over 20 literary awards and prizes, including the Guardian Fiction Prize, the inaugural Forward Prize for Poetry for a single poem, the Somerset Maugham Award and the Costa Poetry Award. She is the Scots Makar, professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, Chancellor of the University of Salford and a CBE.

Kay’s work is remarkable for its range of genres, its consistent reinvention of forms, and its marriage of intimate, domestic depictions of individual lives with broad political and philosophical themes. In works such as her breakthrough poetry collection, The Adoption Papers (1991), the novel Trumpet (1998) – a path-breaking depiction of trans identity – and the autobiographical Red Dust Road (2010), her publications explore identity, individuality and belonging, and love between family members, lovers and friends. Amongst many other questions, her works asks what Britishness is, what race means, what it is to love, and what gender is, and can be.

This international conference, the first on Kay’s work, brings together scholars from a wide range of literary and cultural studies. The British Council describe Kay as having, over the past two decades, ‘moved from marginal voice to national treasure.’ This conference will examine the work that has marked Kay’s shift from the margins to the centre, addressing a writer whose work has expanded the scope of British literature. We welcome papers on any topic related to Kay’s writing, including, but not limited to:

• Scottish national identity
• Autobiography and life writing
• Black British writing
• Trans identities
• Lesbian writing
• The family
• Adoption
• Scottish Women’s writing
• Black Scottish Writing
• The impact / legacy of Trumpet
• Intersections of form (such as music, poetry, fiction, music, dramatic voice)
• Landscape and place
• Love
• Humour
• The line between life and art

We welcome papers from any disciplines and theoretical perspectives, and from scholars at all career stages, especially ECRs. Please send a title and 300 word abstract for a 20-minute paper, as well as your name, any affiliation, and a 100-word professional biography, to kay.conference@gylphi.co.uk by 6 March 2020.

The conference is sponsored by Gylphi. Selected papers from the conference will be published as Jackie Kay: Critical Essays, with a foreword by Kay, as part of Gylphi’s Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays series (Series Editor: Dr Sarah Dillon).

For more information, click here.

Mixed-Race in the US and UK: Comparing the Past, Present, and Future

Emerald Publishing Limited
2019-11-23
193 pages
152 x 229mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781787695542
Ebook ISBN: 9781787695559

Jennifer Patrice Sims, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Alabama, Huntsville

Chinelo L. Njaka, Independent Social Researcher
Peckham Rights! United Kingdom

Contributing to an emerging literature on mixed-race people in the United States and United Kingdom, this book draws on racial formation theory and the performativity (i.e. “doing”) of race to explore the social construction of mixedness on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to macro- and micro-level theoretical frameworks, the authors use comparative and relational analytical approaches to reveal similarities and differences between the two nations, explaining them in terms of both common historical roots as well as ongoing contemporary interrelationships.

Focusing on the census, racial identity, civil society, and everyday experiences at the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality, Mixed-Race in the US and UK: Comparing the Past, Present, and Future offers academics and students an intriguing look into how mixed-race is constructed and experienced within these two nations. A final in-depth discussion on the authors’ research methodologies makes the book a useful resource on the processes, challenges, and benefits of conducting qualitative research in two nations.

Contents

• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. Introduction: The Past, Present, and Future of Mixed-Race People in the United States and United Kingdom
• Chapter 2. Creating Mixed-Race: The Census in the US and the UK
• Chapter 3. Black, British Asian, Mixed-Race, or Jedi: Mixed-Race Identity in the US and UK
• Chapter 4. Mixed-Race Civil Society: Racial Paradigms and Mixed-Race (Re)production in the US and UK
• Chapter 5. “Sometimes it’s the first thing people ask:” Daily Experiences of Mixedness in the US and UK
• Chapter 6. “Yes, girl, yes. I want to have babies:” Mixed-Race Families Generation after Generation
• Chapter 7. Queering Critical Mixed Race Studies
• Chapter 8. Conclusion: Creating and Comparing a Mixed-Race Future
• Methodological Appendix: Conducting Qualitative Research on Both Sides of the Atlantic
• References
• Index

UAH professor publishes new book on mixed-race at home and abroad

University of Alabama in Huntsville
2019-11-21

Dr. Jennifer Patrice Sims, Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) recently published her second book Photo Credit Michael Mercier

Dr. Jennifer Patrice Sims, Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) recently published her second book, Mixed-Race in the US and UK: Comparing the Past, Present, and Future coauthored with UK-based scholar Dr. Chinelo L. Njaka. The book is the second in the Critical Mixed Race Studies book series by Emerald Publishing…

Read the entire press release here.

“I’m Black, Native, gay, and I’m proud”: Fentress LeBeau shares his story about being a minority among his people

West River Eagle
Eagle Butte, South Dakota
2019-09-25

Alaina Adakai (Alaina Beautiful Bald Eagle), Managing Editor

Fentress LeBeau

Much can be said about Fentress LeBeau — with his energetic wit and bright smile, he can light up any room. Standing 6’ tall, with his hair in long braids, Fentress makes no effort to hide his chin strap beard, even as he wears glittery eyeshadow and vibrant lipstick.

By just being himself, the 20-year old Eagle Butte resident unintentionally draws attention, which sometimes results in negative and violent responses from others.

After years of suppressing his feelings and finally being confident with his identity, Fentress said he is ready to bring awareness to the two-spirit community on Cheyenne River, a sensitive topic that is not usually talked about openly; however, it is matter of great cultural significance that must be addressed, said Fentress.

Childhood memories: always knowing he was different

Fentress is the son of Amber LeBeau, a Lakota descendant of Chief Swift Bird (Oohenumpa), and an African American father. Fentress said many of his childhood memories were of being bullied for being different, first for his skin color, and then for his sexual orientation.

“Whenever we were three or four years old, people would bully us because my sister and I were black. At that age, I don’t think people knew I was two-spirited, so the bullying was because of my skin color,” said Fentress…

Read the entire article here.

Red Dust Road

National Theatre of Scotland
2019-08-10 through 2019-09-21

Elaine C. Smith and Sasha Frost

Based on the soul-searching memoir by Scots Makar Jackie Kay, adapted by Tanika Gupta, and directed by Dawn Walton.

“You are made up from a mixture of myth and gene. You are part fable, part porridge”

Growing up in 70s’ Scotland as the adopted mixed raced child of a Communist couple, young Jackie blossomed into an outspoken, talented poet. Then she decided to find her birth parents…

From Nairn to Lagos, Red Dust Road takes you on a journey full of heart, humour and deep emotions. Discover how we are shaped by the folk songs we hear as much as by the cells in our bodies.

Opening at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2019, and at HOME, Manchester in September 2019

Touring to Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness in autumn 2019.

For more information, click here.

We The Animals

Dirty Movies
2019-03-25

Victor Fraga

Homosexuality of nine-year-old begins to flourish as he contends with his dysfunctional household, in lyrical drama based on the eponymous novel – in cinemas and also on VoD

Three mixed-race boys – Manny (Isaiah Kristian), Joel (Josiah Gabriel) and Jonah (Evan Rosado) – live with their parents (Raúl Castillo and Sheila Vand) somewhere in upstate New York. They affectionately call them “Ma” and “Paps”. The affection that they receive in exchange, however, is extremely volatile. Paps is the stereotypical über macho type who uses violence as his main currency. He’s abrupt and short-tempered. Ma is vulnerable. She allows Paps to manipulate and abuse her. The three children often come across as far more emotionally held-together than their parents.

Nine-year-old Jonah, the youngest of the three boys, is also the most sensitive person in the family. While Manny and Joel attempted to emulate their father’s grotesque sense of masculinity, Jonah prefers to go into hiding. Drawing is his venting outlet. He does it from under the bed, as if finding shelter from the stormy family life outside…

Read the entire review here.

The Inheritance of Haunting, Poems

University of Notre Dame Press
March 2019
108 pages
6.00 x 9.00in
Paperback ISBN: 9780268105389
Hardcover ISBN: 9780268105372
eBook (PDF) ISBN: 9780268105396
eBook (EPUB) ISBN: 9780268105402

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

Winner of the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, The Inheritance of Haunting, by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, is a collection of poems contending with historical memory and its losses and gains carried within the body, wrought through colonization and its generations of violence, war, and survival.

The driving forces behind Rhodes’s work include a decolonizing ethos; a queer sensibility that extends beyond sexual and gender identities to include a politics of deviance; errantry; ramshackled bodies; and forms of loving and living that persist in their wild difference. Invoking individual and collective ghosts inherited across diverse geographies, this collection queers the space between past, present, and future. In these poems, haunting is a kind of memory weaving that can bestow a freedom from the attenuations of the so-called American dream, which, according to Rhodes, is a nightmare of assimilation, conquest, and genocide. How love unfolds is also a Big Bang emergence into life—a way to, again and again, cut the future open, open up the opening, undertake it, begin.

These poems are written for immigrants, queer and transgender people of color, women, Latin Americans, diasporic communities, and the many impacted by war.

How this theoretical physicist is advocating for women of colour in STEM

tvo
Toronto, Canada
2019-07-11

Carla Lucchetta

Nam Kiwanuka interviews theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein talks to The Agenda in the Summer about her identity as a queer Black woman, the importance of mentorship, and why advocacy is a vital component of her work

What makes a person dream of becoming a theoretical physicist? In Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s case, it was growing up with activist parents. Her mother, Margaret Prescod, has headed up various advocacy groups, including International Black Women for Wages for Housework, and is the host and producer of Sojourner Truth, a public-affairs radio show in Los Angeles. Her father, Sam Weinstein, is a labour organizer.

As she tells Nam Kiwanuka on The Agenda in the Summer, “I spent my entire childhood being confronted with things that weren’t going right in the world and things that needed to be better about the world. And I think part of what was attractive to me about doing cosmology and particle physics was here was a thing that was beyond these human concerns … something that was bigger than all of us but interested all of us. Where do we come from: Why are we here? These really big esoteric questions.”

Chanda at age four with her parents Sam Weinstein and Margaret Prescod ​​​​​​​(Los Angeles Times/ucla.edu)

Now a physics professor at the University of New Hampshire, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has conducted research on such topics as axions, dark matter, and quantum fields. She’s also an advocate for Black women, and LGBTQ people in STEM…

Read the entire article here.