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Season 4, Episode 14: Mixed Race Writer Maria Olsen on the New Normal Family

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LIVE 2/13/17 5pm Eastern: I am excited to talk with Maria Olsen who is a children’s book author and now has a new non-fiction book: Not the Cleaver Family–The New Normal in Modern American Families (Tate Publishing, 2016).Don’t miss my talk with her.-Heidi Durrow

I interview Maria Olsen 2/13 5pm EASTERN. Tune in!

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Maria Leonard Olsen is a biracial woman whose parents were forbidden by law to marry in their home state of Maryland in the early 1960s. She is the mother of two children, a lawyer, journalist, radio talk show host (WPFW fm 89.3 in Washington, D.C.) and author of the children’s book, “Mommy, Why’s Your Skin So Brown?” Maria graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, served in the Clinton Administration’s Justice Department, fostered newborn babies awaiting adoption, and has been on the boards of Children’s National Medical Center BOV, the Catholic Coalition for Special Education, GirlsUp and the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Washington. She has written for The Washington Post,Washingtonian, Bethesda Magazine, Parenting, BabyTalk and Washington For Women. She lives in Fairhaven, Maryland.

 

Season 3, Episode 25: Mari Naomi, Mixed-Race Cartoonist & Writer

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RECORDED 7/25/16: I loved taking with MariNaomi about her recently released book Turning Japanese! You can listen to the episode here or download it from itunes.  Also, you can pre-order her forthcoming book I Thought You Hated Me on Amazon here.-Heidi Durrow

Listen to @marinaomi talk about her newest book Turning Japanese. #multiracial

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MariNaomi has been making memoir comics since 1997. She’s the author and illustrator of the SPACE Prize-winning Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22 (Harper Perennial, 2011), the Eisner-nominated Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories(2dcloud/Uncivilized Books, 2014), the recently released Turning Japanese (2dcloud, 2016) and I Thought You Hated Me (Retrofit Comics, 2016), and her self-published Estrus Comics (1998 to 2009). Her work has appeared in over sixty print publications, and has been featured on numerous websites, such as The Rumpus, The Weeklings, LA Review of Books, Midnight Breakfast, Truth-out, XOJane, Buzzfeed, PEN America and more. Mari’s work on the Rumpus won a SPACE Prize and an honorable mention in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2013.

mari TurningJapaneseMariNaomi’s comics and paintings have been featured in such institutions as the De Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco’s Asian American Museum, and the Japanese American Museums in Los Angeles and San Jose. In 2011, Mari toured with the literary roadshow Sister Spit. She is the creator and curator of the Cartoonists of Color Database and the Queer Cartoonists Database.

Season 3, Episode 24: Author Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Sarong Party Girls

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RECORDED 7/18/16: It was so great to speak with Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan about her new book Sarong Party Girls. You can listen to it here or download it on itunes.-Heidi Durrow

My interview w/ @cheryltan88 Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan abt her excellent book Sarong Party Girls.

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cheryl photoCheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based journalist and author of “Sarong Party Girls” (William Morrow, 2016) as well as “A Tiger In The Kitchen: A Memoir of Food & Family“ (Hyperion, 2011). She is the editor of the fiction anthology “Singapore Noir“ (Akashic Books, 2014).

She was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and the Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, National Geographic, Foreign Policy, Marie Claire, Newsweek, Bloomberg Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, The (Portland) Oregonian, The (Topeka) Capital-Journal and The (Singapore) Straits Times among other places.

Cheryl SPG_FINALCOVERShe has been an artist in residence at Yaddo, where she wrote “A Tiger in the Kitchen,” Hawthornden Castle, Le Moulin à Nef, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Ledig House and the Studios of Key West. In 2012, she was the recipient of a major arts creation grant from the National Arts Council of Singapore in support of her novel.

Born and raised in Singapore, she crossed the ocean at age 18 to go to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Unsure of whether she would remain in the U.S. after college, she interned in places as disparate as possible. She hung out with Harley Davidson enthusiasts in Topeka, Kan., interviewed gypsies about their burial rituals in Portland, Ore., covered July 4 in Washington, D.C., and chronicled the life and times of the Boomerang Pleasure Club, a group of Italian-American men that were getting together to cook, play cards and gab about women for decades in their storefront “clubhouse” in Chicago.

An active member of the Asian American Journalists Association, she served on its national board for seven years, ending in 2010.

“Utterly irresistible. I fell in love with the fresh, exuberant voice and trenchant wit of Jazzy … In her debut novel, Tan is saying something profound and insightful about the place of women in our globalized, capitalized, interconnected world.” — Ruth Ozeki
 
“In Singapore this satirical novel of predatory beauties would be regarded as deeply subversive – for the rest of us, and anyone familiar with life in that little island city state, it is hilarious and original.” — Paul Theroux
 

“Scarlett O’Hara would have met her match in Jazeline Lim, the brazen, striving, yet ultimately vulnerable heroine of this bold debut novel. Tan paints a stark portrait, comic yet chilling, of a society in which a young woman who seeks a way out risks falling in too deep.” — Julia Glass

Season 3, Episode 22: Award-winning Writer Dmae Roberts

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RECORDED 6/30/16: I was so excited to talk with my friend and writer-filmmaker Dmae Roberts about her wonderful new book The Letting Go Trilogies Stories of a Mixed Race Family.  Listen to her interview here or download it from itunes!-Heidi Durrow

Listen to my interview with @dmaeroberts about her excellent book! #multiracial

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dmae LettingGo-CoverDmae Roberts has recently completed her memoir book The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed Race Family which traces four decades of what it means to be a mixed-race adult who sometimes called herself A Secret Asian Woman. With her personal essays written over a ten-year period, Dmae Roberts journeys through biracial identity, Taiwan, sci-fi, and the trials of her interracial Taiwanese and Oklahoman family amid love, loss and letting go of past regrets and pain.

Dmae RobertsDmae Roberts is a writer/producer who received two Peabody Awards for her documentary Mei Mei, a Daughter’s Song and the Crossing East series. She received the Dr. Suzanne Ahn Civil Rights and Social Justice award from the Asian American Journalists Association and is a USA Fellow. She’s been published in Oregon Humanities, The Sun, Where Are You From? (Thymos Group) and Mothering in East Asian Communities (Demeter Press). Her book is The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family.

Mixed Experience History Month 2016: Regina M. Anderson, playwright & artistic leader

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mixed race historyRegina M. Anderson (1901-1993) was born of mixed-race ancestry.  She identified as “American” and was a leader in the black artistic community.

Anderson received a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University.  She worked as a librarian with the New York Public Library for more than 40 years.  Her home became a central hub for Harlem’s intellectuals and artists.

She was a founding member of the Krigwa Players, a black acting troupe with became the Negro Experimental Theatre.  Anderson was also a playwright who wrote under the pseudonym Ursula or Ursala Trelling.  Her work included Climbing Jacob’s Ladder (1931) and Underground (1932).

She is quoted as saying in 1981: “It gives me a great deal of personal satisfaction to have lived to see much of what we and other pioneers worked to achieve becoming a reality. However, we need more and more opportunities for our actors, writers, and directors.” Anderson died in 1993 in New York. –Heidi Durrow

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for archived profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014, 2015.

Season 3, Episode 10: Author Sunil Yapa, Connecting Multiracial Experience with Global Identity

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Sunil Yapa Mixed Race WriterYour Hear is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

RECORDED 1/18/16: You know how you meet someone and you think: this person’s doing some really important work.  That was my impression of Sunil Yapa when I met him almost 8 years ago.  So it was particularly exciting to read his book, Your Heart Is A Muscle the Size of a Fist, and see the incredible reception it’s already getting.  You are going to love this book.  And you’ll love hearing more about his journey as a writer and the inspiration for this great story.  You can listen here or download the episode from itunes! – Heidi Durrow

Listen to @heididurrow interview with debut novelist phenom @sunilyapa  #multiracial #mixedrace

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Sunil Yapa on Heidi Durrow podcast

Sunil Yapa by Beowulf Sheehan

Sunil Yapa holds a bachelor’s degree in economic geography from Penn State University and an MFA from Hunter College. The biracial son of a Sri Lankan father and mother from Montana, Yapa has lived around the world, including time in Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India, as well as London, Montreal, and New York City.

 

Season 2, Summer Short 6: Actress/Writer Katie Malia of web series “Almost Asian”

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Katie MaliaRECORDED 8/24/15: I loved talking with Katie Malia, creator of the web series Almost Asian.  She’s talented and funny and just simply great.  You can listen to the show here or download it on itunes.-Heidi Durrow

This is what Katie says about the impetus for creating the webseries: “Growing up half-Asian was very confusing. From filling out ethnicity sections in college applications to introducing lunch trades with pre-trending Japanese food on the grade school playground, before the United Colors of Benetton effect took hold, being the bi-product of an interracial couple was new. Nobody was talking about it, especially in suburban America. Before Obama and yes, Keanu came along, there was no half-anything to admire as a role model, particularly a female one. It’s really no surprise that my best friend growing up was also half-Japanese due to our relatable childhood experiences. And by expanding on these shared experiences, my intention with “Almost Asian” is to celebrate the nuanced mixed-ethnic identity while challenging our social conventions regarding race, nationality, and culture through a comedic lens.”

Listen to my interview with @iamalmostasian creator @kathrynmalia on hapa identity & Hollywood.

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Katie Malia is an “ethnically-ambiguous” working actress and writer in Los Angeles. Having appeared in over 100+ national commercials and print campaigns and featured on HBO’s Hello Ladies, How I Met Your Mother, The Mindy Project, Sleepy Hollow and Ground Floor, Katie studied at Columbia University in New York and continues to write and create her own content playing numerous original characters, one of which was featured on Funny or Die’s homepage. She also performs stand up around Los Angeles, was a contributing writer for Daily Candy and Time Out LA, and also produced the short film “VARMiNT,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at Dances with Films Festival in Hollywood, the Audience Award at New Orleans Film Festival in 2013, and was a Vimeo “Staff Pick” in 2014. Katie lives in Silver Lake. Oh yeah, and she hates the term “ethnically-ambiguous.”  You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Sargent Johnson, artist

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mehm15_sargent_johnsonSargent Johnson (1887-1967) was a talented artist–painter, sculptor, and lithographer–known for abstract and early modern styles.  Born in 1887, he was the son of Anderson Johnson who was of Swedish descent, and Lizzie Jackson, who was African-American and Cherokee.  He started his art training at thirty-two at the California School of Fine Arts.  There, he won several prizes which would be the first of many more to come.  In 1926, he started showing his work at the Harmon Foundation. Johnson “worked with assurance in media ranging from carved wood to watercolor and metal, though his humanistic themes increasingly put him out of step with Bay Area art after 1950.  Johnson took part in the Federal Arts Project and received local commissions that included church murals and the still extant decoration of a relief sculpture on a vast outdoor wall behind San Francisco’s Washington High School.  Johnson taught briefly at Mills College but remained committed to his own art above all else,”  according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Johnson died of a heart attack in San Francisco in 1967 at the age of eighty.  More information about his art and life can be found here.

On being mixed, Johnson said: “I had a tough time in the early days.  They didn’t give me much of a chance.  They didn’t know who I was, but I had made up my mind that I was going to be an artist.”-Heidi Durrow

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for archived profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Edmonia Lewis, sculptor

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mehm15_edmonia_lewisEdmonia Lewis (approx. 1844-approx. 1911) was the first African-American/Native American woman to become a prominent American sculptor.

Born to a Native-American mother, and an African-American father, Lewis also used her Indian name “Wild Fire.”  She began her career at Oberlin College, and went on to study in Boston where, under the tutelage of a well-known sculptor, she met Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a Civil War commander, and sculpted him.  In 1865, she moved to Rome where her work drew considerable attention.  Upon her return to the United States several years later, she received substantial commissions for her portrait busts.  She was commissioned to create busts of Wadsworth Longfellow, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln among others.

050708_EdmoniaLewis2One of her most famous sculptures is Forever Free, a representation of an African-American couple in broken chains after Emancipation.  The driving force in Lewis’s life was perhaps an incident at Oberlin, when she was accused of poisoning two white classmates and brutally beaten by a vigilante mob that left her for dead.  According to A History of African American Artists  From 1792 to the Present: “Edmonia Lewis’s struggle was unique.  Like other artists, she had to establish her own aesthetic values and artistic identity–but she had to do this in the face of strong prejudices against women, African-Americans, and Native Americans.  In addition, she had to struggle with her suspicions, her inability to trust others–the scar tissue from the scandalous charges brought against her at Oberlin, her brutal beating, and her humiliating ‘expulsion’ (from Oberlin) despite exoneration.  Nothing like this was endured by any other artist of her day.” (p. 67)

On becoming an artist Lewis said: “I always wanted to make the form of things.  My mother was famous for inventing new patterns for embroidery, and perhaps the same thing is coming out of me.”–Heidi Durrow

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for archived profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014. Copyright 2015.

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Wifredo Lam, painter

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mehm15_wifredo_lamPainter Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was born in Cuba, the son of a Spanish/black mother and a Chinese father.  Trained as an academic realist, Lam’s art evolved to include modern aspects after his introduction to the work of Picasso and Matisse in Spain.

Picasso was a good friend to Lam and also a great influence.  But after living in Europe for many years, Lam returned to Cuba in 1942 where he reconnected with his Afro-Cuban background and transformed his work yet again.  Lam’s masterwork is The Jungle, often compared to in achievement, and once hung by, Picasso’s Guernica.

Of his art Lam once said: “… With all my energy I sought to paint the drama of my country, but most of all to lend expression to the spirit of Negro man, the beauty of Negro plastic art…”-Heidi Durrow

 

Mixed Experience History Month is the annual blog post series created by The New York Times best-selling author Heidi Durrow celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to highlight the long history of folks and events involved in the Mixed experience.  Please look for archived profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog!  Thanks for reading.  And check out some of the previous year’s profiles: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012,  2013, 2014. Copyright 2015.

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