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Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Educator & Activist

May 16, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, also known as Zitkala-Sa or Red Bird, was born in 1876 to a full-blooded Sioux woman and a white man.

She struggled with her mixed-race heritage as a chid on the reservation as well as off.  She received a scholarship to attend Earlham University where she studied violin.

Her activism began after she took a teaching position at the New England Conservatory where the school’s founder’s philosophy was “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

She started writing essays against the movement to make Indian students relinquish their cultural identities.  In 1916, as an officer of the Society of American Indians, she was instrumental in the formation of the Indian Welfare Committee and wrote an investigation into the government’s mistreatment of Indian tribes–specifically, the defrauding of American Indians in Oklahoma of their oil-rich lands.  In 1926, she founded the National Council of American Indians, a lobbying group for American Indian legal rights.

Zitkala-Sa’s worked as an activist her entire life, but she also kept up her love for music and writing.  In 1938, her opera “Sun Dance” debuted on Broadway.  She died that same year.-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, 2016.

 

Filed Under: Mixed Experience History Month Tagged With: biracial, biracial historical figures, biracial history, growing up biracial, heidi durrow, mixed, mixed experience, mixed experience history month, mixed race historical figures, mixed race history, mixed roots festival, multiracial artists

Season 4, Episode 16: Linguist and Scholar John McWhorter, “Talking Back, Talking Black”

March 8, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

heidi durrow, mixed race, multiracial, mixed experience

LIVE 3/13/17 5pm Eastern: I am very excited to speak with linguist, writer and scholar John McWhorter about his new book Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America’s Lingua Franca. You can listen to the conversation live or download the episode from itunes.-Heidi Durrow

I interview @johnhmcwhorter about his new book Talking Back, Talking Black. #multiracial

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It has now been almost fifty years since linguistic experts began studying Black English as a legitimate speech variety, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound “black.” In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history, while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect. Talking Back, Talking Black takes us on a fascinating tour of a nuanced and complex language that has moved beyond America’s borders to become a dynamic force for today’s youth culture around the world.

Filed Under: Books, Episodes Tagged With: biracial, mixed, mixed race, multiracial, multiracial artists, multiracial identity

Mixed Experience History Month 2016

May 2, 2016 by admin 1 Comment

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.

Filed Under: Mixed Experience History Month Tagged With: biracial, growing up biracial, mixed, mixed experience, mixed experience history month, mixed race artists, mixed race history

Season 3, Episode 9: Traveling Abroad While Mixed & Other Musings

January 11, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment

the mixed experience by heidi durrowRECORDED 1/11/16: In the first episode of the season, I took the opportunity to muse a little bit about my recent trip to a remote island and my search for a “tribe” that looks like me.  Also, I share a recent blog post about my thoughts on the state of Multiracial America.  Is this a multiracial or biracial moment or is it a multiracial or biracial movement?  I say there is no multiracial movement (at least not yet).  What do you say?  Listen here or download the episode from itunes.-Heidi Durrow

Traveling abroad while #mixedrace or #multiracial & trying to find my “tribe”.

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Filed Under: Episodes Tagged With: mixed, mixed chick, mixed experience, mixed festival, mixed race, mixed race artists, mixed remixed, mixed remixed festival, mixed roots, mixed roots festival, multiracial, multiracial artists

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

August 7, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Episodes Tagged With: biracial, biracial artists, growing up biracial, hapa, mixed, mixed experience, mixed festival, mixed race, mixed roots, multiracial

Season 2, Summer Short 7: Author Susan Katz Miller, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family

August 1, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

RECORDED 8/31/15: I was excited to speak with Susan Katz Miller about her writing and work on embracing two religious identities in a family.

Being Both Cover, High ResShe is the author of Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family. We talk about “post-authenticity” and “bringing the blur” and the parallels between the mixed race experience and the interfaith experience.  You can listen to the episode here or download it from itunes.-Heidi Durrow

A great conversation with @beingboth on the Mixed experience of an interfaith family!

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susankatzmillerstephaniewilliamimagesAuthor and journalist Susan Katz Miller is both an interfaith child and an interfaith parent. Her father is Jewish, her mother is Protestant: she grew up in Reform Judaism. After marrying a Protestant, Miller and her husband decided to raise their children in both religions, in a community of interfaith families. Miller served as Board Co-Chair of the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington DC.

Miller graduated from Brown University, and began her journalism career at Newsweek in New York. After working in the Los Angeles and Washington bureaus, she moved to Dakar, Senegal for three years. While there, she wrote travel pieces for the New York Times, was tear-gassed in the streets while covering an election, interviewed the President of Senegal for Newsweek International, and wrote Christian Science Monitor pieces from Benin, Togo, the Gambia, and Sierra Leone. On returning to the States, she became a US Correspondent for the British weekly magazine New Scientist. She then spent three years freelancing from northeastern Brazil. After her two children were born, she and her husband settled in the Washington, DC, area, and she founded the first blog devoted to interfaith family communities and interfaith identity,onbeingboth.com, and began blogging at Huffington Post Religion.

Miller’s writing has also appeared in Time, Slate, Utne Reader, Discover, Science, National Wildlife, Health, Moment, Jewcy.com, interfaithfamily.com, and many other publications. Miller studied photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and her photographs have been published in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and International Wildlife. Her work on interfaith families has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, NPR’sHere & Now, NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, on the PBS program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and on HuffPost Live, and in dozens of other media outlets. Miller also writes for the Jewish Daily Forward‘s interfaith relationship advice column, The Seesaw.

 

 

Filed Under: Episodes Tagged With: being both, biracial, growing up biracial, interfairth, mixed, mixed experience, multiracial, susan katz miller

Season 2, Summer Short 5: Blaxicans in Los Angeles

August 1, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

RECORDED 8/17/15: I had a great talk with Walter Thompson-Hernandez about his wonderful photo project on Blaxicans of LA.  Learn more about how he navigated growing up Black and Mexican in LA and is scholarship on the issue as well as some of his thoughts about whether there is a multiracial movement afoot.

“The wblacklovebrownay I see it, Blaxicans really challenge the way we think about race and force us to think about racial identities in more inclusive and broad ways. Blaxicans are dual minorities. We represent two of the largest ethnic minority groups. And I think because Blaxicans represent two of the most aggrieved groups in Los Angeles, it’s important to understand that certain sets of issues and challenges that have been traditionally labeled as African American or Latino, ultimately, do not exist for people who self-identify as Blaxicans.” Walter Thompson-Hernandez

Learn more about the project in this LA Times article or listen in on our conversation here or download it on itunes! –Heidi Durrow

 

A great conversation with @blaxicansofla about #multiracial #mixedrace experience.

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walter thomopson hernandez
Walter Thompson-Hernandez is a researcher, photographer, and documentary filmmaker based out of Los Angeles, California who will begin his doctoral research in the Fall of 2016. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California and is a recent graduate of the Stanford University Latin American Studies Master’s program. He is currently a researcher at the University of Southern California (USC), Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII), and Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE), where he is part of a research team that is working on a forthcoming book about Latinos in South LA. Outside of his work at CSII, Walter’s research looks at issues related to immigration, race, Afro-Latinos, and sports in the United States,  Latin America, and Europe. His research and projects have been featured by CNN, BBC, Los Angeles Times, Remezcla, and UNIVISION. His latest academic project will be featured in a forthcoming book titled, “Afro-Latinos in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas.”
instagram:
@mychivas
@blaxicansofla
personal website: wthdz.com

 

 

Filed Under: Episodes Tagged With: biracial, blaxicans, heidi durrow, mixed, mixed experience, mixed race

Season 2, Summer Short 3: Schwarz Rot Gold, German Documentary Series about Being Black and German

July 30, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

jermain

RECORDED 8/4/15: I loved talking to the filmmakers behind a German documentary series Schwarz Rot Gold. Schwarz Rot Gold portrays ten famous German Black and talks about the past, present and future of identities and racism in Germany. The goal of the project is to raise awareness about racism in Germany and to present role models for young people.  Learn more here.  And check out their Facebook page too.

A really great talk with Black German filmmakers about new documentary Schwarz Rot Gold! @schwarzrotgold_#multiraical #mixedrace

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“Schwarz Rot Gold” is produced by Jermain Raffington (journalist) und Laurel Raffington (psychologist). The project is motivated by Jermain’s personal experience of growing up as a Black person in Germany as well as Laurel and Jermain’s dream of raising their children in a non-racist, open-minded Germany. The idea to start Schwarz Rot Gold originated in 2012. All portraits were filmed in the summer of 2014. Season 1 was published in April 2015 and season 2 is now in post-production. You can see all of the first season with English subtitles on the filmmakers’ website.

You can hear our complete interview here or download it from itunes.

 

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Jermain was born in 1985 in Hamburg, Germany, and is the eldest of four boys. His mother, who now lives in Sweden, is German and his father, who still resides in Hamburg, is Jamaican. A basketball stipend allowed Jermain to go to a US college in Iowa. Later he played basketball professionally for 7 years in four different teams of the first and second national basketball league in Germany. Jermain married his wife Laurel in 2012. He retired from basketball in the summer of 2014 and is now a sports editor at Vice Germany.
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Laurel was born in 1988 in Siegburg, Germany and is the youngest of three. Her mother is American and her father is German. She spent her childhood in Germany, the US and Japan. After completing high school at a German-American school in Berlin, she went to the UK to study psychology. A masters in cognitive neuroscience in Berlin was followed by her current position in psychology research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, where she is working on her PhD. Both Jermain and Laurel call Berlin, where they currently reside, their home.

 

schwarzrotgold1

 

Great interview with Black-German filmmakers @schwarzrotgold_! #multiracial #mixedrace

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schwarzrotgold2

 

Filed Under: Episodes Tagged With: biracial, growing up biracial, mixed, mixed experience, mixed festival, mixed race, mixed remixed festival, multiracial

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Hiram Revels, legislator

May 22, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

mehm15_hiram_revelsHiram Revels (1822-1901) was the first African-American to serve in the United States Senate.  Revels was African-American and Native American, born to free people of color.  His first career was as a barber in his brother’s barbershop which he took over upon his brother’s death.  He started his education at age 22 and was eventually ordained as an African Methodist Church minister.

According to information from the State Library of North Carolina:

“At the conclusion of the [Civil] war, Revels settled in Natchez, Mississippi and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He continued his pastoral duties and founded new churches. In 1868, Revels was elected alderman. Struggling to keep his political and pastoral duties separate and to avoid racial conflict, Revels earned the respect of both whites and African Americans. His success in managing these forces led to his election as a state senator from Adams County, Mississippi. In 1870 Revels was elected as the first African American member of the United States Senate. Ironically, Revels was elected to fill the position vacated by Jefferson Davis almost 10 years earlier. Revels took his seat in the Senate on February 25, 1870 and served through March 4, 1871, the remainder of Davis’ vacated term.”

After his service in the Senate, he served as a university president, and remained active in his ministry.  He died in 1901.-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.

Filed Under: Mixed Experience History Month Tagged With: biracial, mixed, mixed experience, mixed experience history month, multiracial

Mixed Experience History Month 2015: Lillian Smith, author & social activist

May 21, 2015 by admin Leave a Comment

mehm15_lillian_smithLillian Smith (1897-1966) was a social critic and author of the best-selling novel Strange Fruit (1944) about an interracial love affair.  A white woman, Smith championed the rights of women and minorities in her writing and through her community involvement.  According to Wikipedia, Smith “was one of the first prominent Southern whites to write about and speak openly against racism and segregation.”  “Segregation is spiritual lynching,” she once said.  Smith was the author of several books including Killers of the Dream (1949), Now Is the Time (1955), and Our Faces, Our Words (1964).  In a letter to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Smith wrote: “My warmest greetings to you and to your congregation and to your people who are my people too, for we are all one big human family.  I pray that we shall soon in the South begin to act like one.”-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.

Filed Under: Mixed Experience History Month Tagged With: biracial, mixed, mixed experience, mixed experience history month, multiracial

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Host Heidi Durrow

Host Heidi Durrow

Heidi Durrow is the New York Times best-selling writer of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky and the founder of the original mixed roots film and book festival and now the founder of Mixed Remixed Festival , an annual film, book and performance festival, which will be held next on June 10-11, 2016 at … [Read More]

Recent Posts

  • Season 5, Episode 3: Award-Winning Writer Amina Gautier November 14, 2017
  • Season 5, Episode 2: New York Times Bestselling Writer Julie Lythcott-Haims October 12, 2017
  • Season 4, Episode 19: Writer/Literary Critic Janet Savage July 3, 2017
  • Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Paula Gunn Allen, writer and scholar May 17, 2017
  • Mixed Experience History Month 2017: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Educator & Activist May 16, 2017

The Mixed Experience Minute Vlog

the mixed experience by heidi durrow

The Mixed Experience Minute

In 2007, I instituted Mixed Experience History Month to celebrate historical stories of the Mixed … [Read More...]

Guest Host Jennifer Frappier

Guest Host Jennifer Frappier

I'm so excited that Jennifer Frappier will join The Mixed Experience as a guest host on future … [Read More...]

Podcast Episodes

the mixed experience by heidi durrow

The Mixed Experience Podcast

You can find all episodes and information about guests of The Mixed Experience podcast here and also … [Read More...]

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