Mixed Race Studies

American Sons & Daughters: Mixed Race, Identity in Southern California

KCET Television
Burbank, California
2013-12-04

Susan Straight, Professor of Creative Writing
University of California, Riverside

This is how we began. I looked out at the 300 faces before me and said, “How many of you in this classroom are often asked, in a bar or a store or at a party, What are you?” Maybe a hundred young people raised their hands, and they couldn’t believe that’s what we would spend ten weeks talking about.

“People will guess, all the time, and they’re never right,” one young woman said.

“People think I’m black because of my hair. But I’m Ashkenazi Jewish,” a young man said.

“People think I’m Asian because of my eyes,” someone else said.

“My son is really light, because he’s Mexican-Irish,” said Arely, who is Mexican-American, standing in front of the class and showing her children from a cell phone photo onto the screens. “But my daughter is darker, since she’s Mexican-Colombian, and everyone talks about that. I already know how hard that’s going to be for her.”

The class is “The Mixed Race Novel and the American Experience.” But of course we didn’t talk only about books — we talked about who we are, how America sees us, how our families see us, and most importantly, how we see ourselves. We talked about America’s ongoing obsession with hair and melanin, about what it means to be undocumented, what it means to be a mother, what it means to witness a murder or to lose a dog. But all those discussions began with what it means to be of mixed racial and cultural heritage, and many students in this class at UC Riverside say this was their first time ever talking about these very personal things in an open forum…

Read the entire article here.

Dr. Susan Straight to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #180-Susan Straight
When: Tuesday, 2010-11-09, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 16:00 CST, 14:00 PST)

Susan Straight, Professor of Creative Writing
University of California, Riverside

Susan Straight is an award-winning author of several novels that explore the Mixed experience. Join us for this discussion about her work, her life & her new novel Take One Candle Light a Room.

Download or listen to the podcast here.

Take One Candle, Light a Room: A Novel

Pantheon Books an Imprint of Random House
2010-10-12
336 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-307-37914-6 (0-307-37914-0)

Susan Straight, Professor of Creative Writing
University of California, Riverside

Fantine Antoine is a travel writer, a profession that keeps her happily away from her southern California home most of the time. When she returns to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of her close friend Glorette, she finds herself pulled into the tumultuous life of Glorette’s twenty-one-year-old son, Victor. After getting involved in a shooting, Victor— Fantine’s godson—has fled to Louisiana. Together with her father, Fantine follows Victor, determined to help him avoid the criminal future that he suddenly seems destined for.
 
But Fantine’s own fate will be altered on this journey as well: her father will reveal the wrenching secrets of his past, and she will be compelled to question the most essential choices she’s made in her life. And all three characters will come face-to-face with the issues of race that beset them: Fantine, whose light black skin has eased her way in the world; her father, who grew up in the Jim Crow South; and Victor, whose fall into violence mirrors the path of so many other black men his age.
 
Take One Candle, Light a Room is a powerfully moving story about the intricacies of human connection, and about the ways in which we find a place for ourselves within our families and the world.

In multiracial America, the census puts us in a box

Washington Post
2010-03-21

Susan Straight, Professor of Creative Writing
University of California, Riverside

I received the census form in the mail last week, and I was ready. A vaguely admonitory letter from the Census Bureau had arrived the week before, urging me to fill out the form because the results would be used to “help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need.” It ended with a warning: “Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.”

That’s a lot of fairness and sharing and community going on. But as my three daughters and I talked about the form — and in particular its racial and ethnic categories — we started wondering: How does the census really define our community, and how would that affect whatever our fair share would be?

The first time I got to check a census box for a child, it was 1990. I had an 8-month-old daughter with curly, brown-black hair, cinnamon-dark eyes and almond-colored skin. Her father is a mix of African, Irish and Native American; I am white; and since we could check only one box, the only option available for her was “Other,” as if she were from a different planet…

Read the entire article here.

Susan Straight’s new novel, “Take One Candle, Light a Room,” about a mixed-race family, will be published in October.