Mixed Race Studies

They Called Me ‘Coffee with Milk’ as a Kid

Zócalo Public Square
2015-11-19

Maya Soetoro-Ng (Photo by Kenna Reed)

Peace Educator Maya Soetoro-Ng Wants America to Make Room for Complexity

Maya Soetoro-Ng is the director of community outreach and global learning for the Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. For many years, she taught high school classes in social studies and English and undergraduate and graduate courses in multicultural education, social studies methods, and peace education. She is also the half-sister of President Barack Obama. Before participating in a discussion on what Hawaii can teach America about race, she talked about sharing the Nuyorican poets with her students, her pet peeve, and the hardest part of peace to practice…

Read the interview here.

Questions for Maya Soetoro-Ng: All in the Family

The New York Times
2008-01-20

Deborah Solomon

Q: Let’s talk about the Democratic presidential caucuses taking place on Feb. 19, in Hawaii, where Barack Obama was born. Will you be campaigning for your brother?
Yes, of course. I have taken time off from my various teaching jobs in Honolulu and just got back from two months of campaigning. I have a bumper sticker on my car that says: “1-20-09. End of an Error.”…

Do you think of your brother as black?
Yes, because that is how he has named himself. Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will.

Do you think of yourself as white?
No. I’m half white, half Asian. I think of myself as hybrid. People usually think I’m Latina when they meet me. That’s what made me learn Spanish.

That sort of culturally mixed identity was seen as an anomaly when you were growing up.
Of course, there was a time when that felt like unsteady terrain, and it made me feel vulnerable…

Read the entire interview here.

Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids

Chronicle Books
2010-03-17
264 pages
7 x 7 in; 127 color photographs
ISBN 9780811874083
ISBN10 0811874087

Kip Fulbeck, Professor of Performative Studies, Video
University of California, Santa Barbara

Foreword by Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng

Afterword by Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian)

Mixed — From beloved writer and artist Kip Fulbeck, author of Part Asian, 100% Hapa, this timely collection of portraits celebrates the faces and voices of mixed-race children. At a time when 7 million people in the U.S. alone identify as belonging to more than one race, interest in issues of multiracial identity is rapidly growing. Overflowing with uplifting elements—including charming images, handwritten statements from the children, first-person text from their parents, a foreword by Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng (President Obama‘s sister), and an afterword by international star Cher (who is part Cherokee)—this volume is an inspiring vision of the future.

Visit the official website at www.MixedKids.com.