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Season 4, Episode 3: Robert L. Reece, scholar & writer

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RECORDED 9/13/16: I had a great talk with Robert Reece about his recently released study, “What Are You Mixed With?: An Analysis of Perceived Attractiveness, Skin Tone, and Mixed Raciality.” We have a wide-ranging discussion and touch on ideas about agency and racial strategy, facing the “What are you?” question without taking race into account, mixed race babies, and give a nod to Hey Arnold.  Don’t miss this interview.  You can listen to it here or download it on itunes.-Heidi Durrow

Listen to my conversation with @phuzzieslippers about beauty & claims to #multiracial identity

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Robert-ReeceRobert Reece is a PhD candidate in sociology at Duke University where He takes an intersectional critical race approach to research on the American South, colorism, gender/sex/sexuality, and digital technology. Robert is a co-founder of Still Furious and Brave, a blogging collective of scholar-activists that focuses on issues that rest at the intersections of race, region, and feminism, and founder of Magnolia Fresh, a fashion blog that seeks to cater to black men in the South.  He is also a member of the editorial board for Scalawag magazine, a quarterly magazine that focuses on southern politics and culture.
Robert is originally from Leland, MS, a small town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, and obtained BA and MA degrees in sociology from The University of Mississippi. He has organized or co-organized forums about masculinity and sexual assault, blackness in the 21st century, Mississippi’s Personhood Act, and the contemporary social movements with co-founder Bobby Seale. Robert collects black art, Black Panther Party memorabilia, black superhero comics Legos, and consider herself to be a connoisseur of southern rap.

Season 4, Episode 2: Award-Winning Writer Hasanthika Sirisena, The Other One

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Hasie book cover TheOtherOneRECORDED 9/12/16: Don’t miss my conversation with Hasanthika Sirisena, author of The Other One, an award-winning short story collection.  Hasie is one of my favorite writers and one of my most favorite people and we had a wonderful conversation about her writing and work, and how to keep yourself going when pursuing the writing life.  Tune in here or download the episode from itunes.-Heidi Durrow

My conversation with @thinkhasie about her wonderful book The Other One. #multiracial

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Hasanthika Sirisena’s essays and stories have appeared in The Globe and Mail, WSQ, Narrative,The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Epoch,StoryQuarterly, Narrative and other magazines. Her work has been anthologized in Best New American Voices, and named a distinguished story by Best American Short Stories in 2011 and 2012. She is a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. In 2008 she received a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award. She is currently an associate fiction editor at West Branch magazine and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Susquehanna University.

She is the winner of the 2015 Juniper Prize for Fiction. Her short story collection, THE OTHER ONE, was released earlier this year.

 

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 23: Debut Novelist Phenom Natashia Deon

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RECORDED 7/11/16: Please don’t miss my talk with Natashia Deon whose debut novel, Grace, has announced her as a major new novelist to watch! We talked about her book, but also the need for stories and the relevance of the stories of her novel still in this traumatic and difficult time.  You can listen here or download it on itunes.-Heidi Durrow

.@heididurrow interviews the amazing @natashiadeon about her debut novel! #multiracial

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natashia deonNatashia Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellowship and her debut novel, Grace, debuted June 2016 with Counterpoint Press.

An attorney, writer, law professor, and creator of the popular L.A.-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit, Deón was recently named one of L.A.’s “Most Fascinating People” by L.A. Weekly.

natashia deon bookDeón has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Rumpus, The Feminist Wire, Asian American Lit Review, Rattling Wall, B O D Y and other places.

She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert, has two perfect children, and a lovely husband whom she met while living and working in Kent, England.

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.

Mixed Experience History Month 2016, James McCune Smith, doctor & abolitionist

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James McCune Smith (1813-1865) was born free to an enslaved woman who later self-emancipated herself.  His father was a white slave owner.  Smith was an exceptional student, but was denied admission to universities because of his race.

Smith found a champion in an African-American minister who helped finance his education at University of Glasgow in Scotland instead.

He graduated at the top of his class in 1835.  He received his medical degree in 1837.  Smith returned to New York in the 1840s as the first university-trained black doctor in the country.  He cared for both black and white patients and worked tirelessly to help children specifically, the kids of the Colored Orphan Asylum where he practiced for 25 years.

Smith was the first university-trained black doctor in the US. #mixedrace #multiracial

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He was a prominent aboilitionist and wrote extensively against slavery including writing the introduction to Frederick Douglass’ autobiography.  Smith died in 1863 in Ohio where he served as a professor at Wilberforce College.  He was survived by his wife and five children.-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.

Mixed Experience History Month 2016

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mehm16 LarsenIt’s May and so our celebration of Mixed Experience History Month begins!

This the 10th year I’ve written this series and I have managed to find some really wonderful stories I hope you’ll enjoy.

I established Mixed Experience History Month in 2007 on my personal blog Light-skinned-ed Girl as a way of claiming a history and a voice that I felt had been denied me.

Part of the difficulty of claiming one’s identity in the Mixed experience is that we have no history.  Our stories have been written out of the texts to conform to what society has allowed us to say about our racial identities.  And usually that has either silenced our experience and/or simplified them.

It’s easy to celebrate Mixed Experience History Month!  Just follow along with the posts I’ll make each weekday in May profiling historical figures and events that relate to the Mixed experience.  This year I will be posting the blog profiles on my website The Mixed Experience in their entirety and in part on my personal blog with a click through link.

If you have ideas of people I should profile please email me at heidi(at)heidiwdurrow.com.  And remember this is history so I’m only looking for people to profile who have passed away!  P.S. Anybody know who this year’s badge features?–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 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.

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