Mixed Race Studies

Sugar Pie DeSanto: After 50 Years, ‘Go Going’ Strong

Fresh Air from WHYY [Philadelphia]
National Public Radio
2010-07-29

Terry Gross, Host

Ed Ward, Rock Music Commentator

Ace Records

Sugar Pie DeSanto was born in Brooklyn in October 1935, and was christened Umpeleya Marsema Balinton. Her father was Filipino, her mother African-American. Her mother had been a concert pianist, but DeSanto says her father couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. He moved the family to San Francisco when Peliya, as they called her, was 4, and soon enough, the young girl discovered dancing and singing and made a fast friend with a neighbor named Jamesetta Hawkins, who was a member of a girl gang called the Lucky 20’s.

Hawkins wound up in jail for her gang activities, and when she got out, she formed a singing group with one of Peliya’s younger sisters. Peliya looked on in envy as Hawkins was discovered by bandleader Johnny Otis and re-christened Etta James. She started entering talent contests in San Francisco, and won so often, they told her to stop entering. At another talent contest in L.A., Otis saw her again and offered to record her. He made good on his offer, and gave her a stage name, too: Little Miss Sugar Pie…

Read the story here. Listen to the story here. Read the transcript here.

Cane River: A Novel

Grand Central Publishing
2001
560 pages
5-1/4″ x 8″
Paperback ISBN-13: 9780446678452

Lalita Tademy

The “New York Times” bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club Pick—the unique and deeply moving epic of four generations of African-American women based on one family’s ancestral past.

Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955

University of California Press
April 2008
318 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780520253452
E-Book ISBN: 9780520941274

Allison Varzally, Associate Professor of History
California State University, Fullerton

On the cover: Future R&B singer Sugar Pie DeSanto in San Francisco’s Fillmore District (circa 1940s)

Winner of the 2009 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society

What happens in a society so diverse that no ethnic group can call itself the majority? Exploring a question that has profound relevance for the nation as a whole, this study looks closely at eclectic neighborhoods in California where multiple minorities constituted the majority during formative years of the twentieth century. In a lively account, woven throughout with vivid voices and experiences drawn from interviews, ethnic newspapers, and memoirs, Allison Varzally examines everyday interactions among the Asian, Mexican, African, Native, and Jewish Americans, and others who lived side by side. What she finds is that in shared city spaces across California, these diverse groups mixed and mingled as students, lovers, worshippers, workers, and family members and, along the way, expanded and reconfigured ethnic and racial categories in new directions.

Contents

• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. California Crossroads
• 2. Young Travelers
• 3. Guess Who’s Joining Us for Dinner?
• 4. Banding Together in Crisis
• 5. Minority Brothers in Arms
• 6. Panethnic Politics Arising from the Everyday
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change

Proof
National Geographic
2013-09-17

Michele Norris, Guest Contributor

Proof is National Geographic’s new online photography experience. It was launched to engage ongoing conversations about photography, art, and journalism. In addition to featuring selections from the magazine and other publications, books, and galleries, this site will offer new avenues for our audience to get a behind-the-scenes look at the National Geographic storytelling process. We view this as a work in progress and welcome feedback as the site evolves. We can be reached at proof@ngs.org.

A feature in National Geographic‘s October 125th anniversary issue looks at the changing face of America in an article by Lise Funderburg, with portraits of multiracial families by Martin Schoeller, that celebrates the beauty of multiracial diversity and shows the limitations around our current categories when talking about race.

In many ways race is about difference and how those differences are codified through language, categories, boxes, segmentation, and even the implicit sorting that goes on in our heads in terms of the way we label others and even ourselves.

Appearance and identity are most certainly linked when it comes to racial categories, but there is another important ingredient in that stew: Experience. There is no room for that on those official census forms, but when a person picks up a writing instrument to choose which box they check, experience most certainly helps guide their hand…

Read the article and view the photographs here.

Chinese Mixed Race in Transnational Comparison (Sawyer Seminar IV)

University of Southern California
Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
University Park Campus
Doheny Memorial Library (DML), Room: 110C
2013-09-27, 13:00-17:00 PDT (Local Time)

USC Conference Convenors:

Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion
University of Southern California

Brian C. Bernards, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Southern California

Velina Hasu Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty Recognition and Development, Director of Dramatic Writing and Professor
University of Southern California

PRESENTERS:

“At the Fringes of the Color Line: Re-Examining the One-Drop Rule Through the Transpacific Crossings of Chinese-White Biracials, 1912-1942”

Emma J. Teng, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations and Associate Professor of Chinese Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Crossing Boundaries, Claiming a Homeland: Chinese Mexicans’ Transpacific Journeys and the Quest to Belong”

Julia María Schiavone-Camacho, Assistant Professor of History
University of Texas, El Paso

“Sino-Tibetan Hybridity and Ethnic Identity Perception in China”

Patricia Schiaffini, Assistant Professor of Chinese
Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas

Presented by the Center for Japanese Religions and Culture’s “Critical Mixed-Race Studies: A Transpacific Approach” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminars Series at the University of Southern California.

For more information, click here.

Latina/o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives

Routledge
2008-05-19
360 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-95420-4

Edited by:

Brian McNeill, Professor and director of training for the Counseling Psychology Program
Washington State University

Joseph M. Cervantes, Professor in the Department of Counseling
California State University, Fullerton

This edited volume focuses on the role of traditional or indigenous healers, as well as the application of traditional healing practices in contemporary counseling and therapeutic modalities with Latina/o people. The book offers a broad coverage of important topics, such as traditional healer’s views of mental/psychological health and well-being, the use of traditional healing techniques in contemporary psychotherapy, and herbal remedies in psychiatric practice. It also discusses common factors across traditional healing methods and contemporary psychotherapies, the importance of spirituality in counseling and everyday life, the application of indigenous healing practices with Latina/o undergraduates, indigenous techniques in working with perpetrators of domestic violence, and religious healing systems and biomedical models. The book is an important reference for anyone working within the general field of mental health practice and those seeking to understand culturally relevant practice with Latina/o populations.

Contents

• An Appreciation of Dr. Michael W. Smith (1960-2006) Lorraine Garcia-Teague
• Contributors
• Introduction: Counselors and Curanderas/os—Parallels in the Healing Process Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes
• Part One: Mestiza/o and Indigenous Perspectives
  • Chapter 1: What Is Indigenous About Being Indigenous? The Mestiza/o Experience Joseph M. Cervantes
  • Chapter 2: Latina/o Folk Saints and Marian Devotions: Popular Religiosity and Healing Fernando A. Ortiz and Kenneth G. Davis
  • Chapter 3: Santeria and the Healing Process in Cuba and the United States Brian W. McNeill, Eileen Esquivel, Arlene Carkasco, and Rosalilia Mendoza
• Part Two: Indigenous and Mestiza/o Healing Practices
  • Chapter 4: The Use of Psychotropic Herbal and Natural Medicines in Latina/o and Mestiza/o Populations German Ascani and Michael W. Smith
  • Chapter 5: Brazil’s Ultimate Healing Resource: The Power of Spirit Sandra Nuñez
  • Chapter 6: La Limpia de San Lazaro as Individual and Collective Cleansing Rite Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 7: Resé un Ave María y Encendí una Velita: The Use of Spirituality and Religion as a Means of Coping with Educational Experiences for Latina/o College Students Jeanett Castellanos and Alberta M. Gloria
• Part Three: Contemporary Aspects of Mestiza/o and Indigenous Healing Practices: Reclamation and Integration
  • Chapter 8: Los Espiritus Siguen Hablando: Chicana Spiritualities Lara Medina
  • Chapter 9: Religious Healing and Biomedicine in Comparative Context Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 10: Curanderismo: Religious and Spiritual Worldviews and Indigenous Healing Traditions Fernando A. Ortiz, Kenneth G. Davis, and Brian W. McNeill
• Part Four: Epilogue
  • Epilogue: Summary and Future Research and Practice Agendas Joseph M. Cervantes and Brian W. McNeill
• Index

In China, mixed marriages can be a labor of love

The Christian Science Monitor
2013-09-21

Yepoka Yeebo, Contributor

In one major Chinese city, marriages between Chinese and Africans are on the rise. In a country known for monoculture, it isn’t easy.

GUANGZHOU, China

The restaurant that Joey and Ugo Okonkwo own was packed on a recent Saturday night, with meal-time banter alternating between English, Cantonese Chinese, and Nigerian dialects among the mainly Nigerian patrons and the occasional Chinese girlfriend. In this bustling southern port city, it’s not an uncommon sight.

Nor is the sight of marriages like Joey and Ugo’s. In Guangzhou, just next door to Hong Kong, a growing number of African traders and immigrants are marrying Chinese women, and mixed families like Joey and Ugo are grappling with questions about race and nationality, in a country that is often proud to be monocultural and is known for sometimes harsh xenophobia.

Joey, who is native to Guangzhou, speaks English with a West African lilt, which she picked up from Ugo, who is from Anambra State in southeastern Nigeria. Joey, whose Chinese name is Li Jieyi, says people regularly look at her 2-year-old daughter Amanda and wonder about her origins.

“Foreigners say she looks like me, Chinese say she looks like her father. I don’t know why,” Joey says as she bustles around the restaurant…

Read the entire article here.

Lecture by Nayland Blake

California College of the Arts
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco Campus
Graduate Studies Lectue Series
2012-11-27, 19:00 PST

Nayland Blake’s mixed-media work in sculpture and installation has been variously described as disturbing, provocative, elusive, tormented, sinister, hysterical, brutal, and tender. Often incorporating themes of masochism, it also manifests two other major threads: his biracial heritage and what he calls his pansexuality.

Blake was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and the controversial Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1994. His work is in the collections of SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He chairs the International Photography Center —Bard MFA program, and he lives and works in Brooklyn.

Faculty-Alumnus David Huffman’s “Out of Bounds” at SFAC Gallery a “SHIFT” Toward Dialogue About Race in America

California College of the Arts
Featured News
2011-09-14

Jim Norrena

Alumnus David Huffman (MFA 1998), who is a recently tenured assistant professor in CCA’s undergraduate Painting/Drawing Program and Graduate Program in Fine Arts, is one of three featured artists in the current group exhibition SHIFT: Three Projects Constructing a New Dialogue About Race in America at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (through December 10, 2011).

Shifting Demographics, Shifting Races

SHIFT is described as an exhibition that “pushes the public to think about our changing demographics and what role race plays in our post-millennial American circumstance.” Also featured are Bay Area artists Elizabeth Axtman [The Love Renegade #308: I Love You Keith Bardwell (Phase 1)] and Travis Somerville (Places I’ve Never Been), yet it is Huffman’s Out of Bounds, his first multimedia exhibition, that is positioned in the Main Gallery at 401 Van Ness Avenue.

“Diversity can be viewed as a social activism of inclusion,” says Huffman, who is mixed race, “to include various groups of people who are normally rejected by prejudice, regardless of their capabilities. Out of Bounds includes works that examine various perspectives — some of which might normally be rejected because of their racial affiliation. I think that diversity is also about broadening the spectrum of possibilities from a variety of capable peoples and ideas.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Essential Barack Obama

Random House
2008-03-10
Abridged Compact Disc
ISBN: 978-0-7393-7594-5

Barack Obama, President of the United States

A CD collection featuring the best-selling audiobooks, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father from Grammy^® award-winning author, Barack Obama.

The Audacity of Hope

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Senator Obama called “the audacity of hope.”

Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics–a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces–from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media–that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.

At the heart of this book is Senator Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats–from terrorism to pandemic–that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy–where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories about family, friends, members of the Senate, even the president, is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus.

A senator and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a skeptic, and above all a student of history and human nature, Senator Obama has written a book of transforming power. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, he says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes–“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

Dreams from My Father

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.