Mixed Race Studies

Reflections on the 2014 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

Multiracial Asian Families: thinking about race, families, children, and the intersection of mixed ID/Asian
2014-11-16

Sharon H. Chang

Ah. Where do I begin. I’m sitting on a plane waiting to takeoff to Seattle (correction, taking off) thinking on my last 3 days in Chicago at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference. I’m exhilarated, emotional, exhausted, enlightened. I got to present some of my research for the first time. After years of researching, [a] major milestone. I got to be with and meet in the flesh so many folk doing great work whom I had mostly only known by name or via social media thumbnails till that point: Eliaichi Kimaro of A Lot Like You; Jeff Chiba Stearns of One Big Hapa Family, Yellow Sticky Notes, and the forthcoming Mixed Match; Megumi Nishikura of Hafu; Fanshen Cox [Digiovanni] of One Drop of Love and, with partner Chandra Crudup, Mixed Roots Stories; Ken Tanabe of Loving Day; Co-creators of War Baby / Love Child (as well as two of the conference’s founders) Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis; and Steven Riley of MixedRaceStudies.org…

Read the entire article here.

“Hafu” an AMAZING Start But We Need to Go Deeper

Multiracial Asian Families
2014-05-20

Sharon Chang

About a week ago I had the chance to do something I’ve been wanting to do (and bugging the filmmakers about for a long time)—finally go to a local screening of the documentary Hafu, meaning “half,” which represents 5 stories of mixed heritage Japanese folks navigating their multi/identities in Japan today. The film was made by a production team of mostly mixed-race Japanese themselves many either having been raised, born and raised, or with very close ties to the country. The movie shares with us the lived lives of: Edward (Venezuelan/Japanese), The Oi Family particularly their son Alex (Mexican/Japanese), David (Ghanaian/Japanese), Fusae (Korean/Japanese), and Sophia (Australian/Japanese)…

…Overall I think this documentary is a must-see. But (and you knew there was gonna be a “but”)—I would like to see the conversation go deeper. To me it felt like there was the proverbial elephant-in-the-room that never quite got called out. A missing critique of the systems and institutions of state, nation and global race politics that press against mixed heritage peoples, intrude upon, limit, and often direct their ID construction…

Read the entire review here.

2 Hapa Parents and 19 Hapa artists: Our Visit to War Baby / Love Child at the Wing Luke

Multiracial Asian Families: Parenting around race, ethnicity and what it means to be mixed Asian
Sunday, 2014-01-12

Sharon H Chang

Cold, rain. Gray-stained morning. Husband and I are sitting in the car at 5 till, draining coffee dregs, waiting for Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum of the Asian American Experience to open. We’re about to visit War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian Art before it closes in a week. We just dropped the kid off at preschool. It’s taken us a full month to get here and many thwarted attempts. And now we finally made it, we’re thrilled and stunned-awkward-silent at the same time. This is the unique challenge I think parents face in trying to raise their race-consciousness and by association, the race-savvy of their parenting (something our children desperately need). How in the world do you find: time to read books, childcare to get to places/events, opportunities to meet and converse with like-minded people/parents?? The truth is so often — you just don’t. Your kid is sick, abort mission. The babysitter cancelled or you can’t find one at all, abort mission. You feel like you’re gonna die from exhaustion, abort mission. The roof is leaking and your basement flooded, abort mission. So needless to say, this was a glorious triumphant morning for me and my partner. 2 Hapas with a Hapa son about to experience the art of 19 Hapa artists. That’s a whole lot of kickbutt Hapa-ness…

Read the entire article here.