[Misty] Copeland: My mom told me I was black. I filled out paperwork at school that said I was black. Those were the boxes I checked. Misty laughed. She laughs a lot. But she’s serious when discussing race. Both of Misty’s parents were mixed race. Sylvia DelaCerna, Misty’s mother, was Italian and black, adopted and brought up by a black woman and her black husband in Kansas City, Missouri. DelaCerna’s adoptive mother worked for child services. DelaCerna grew up to be a professional cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs. Misty’s father split for Chicago when Misty was a child and left her mom with six kids.
“I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,” says Mitski [Miyawaki]. “I didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.”
Mitski Miyawaki, who performs with her band under her first name, grew up in a biracial, multicultural household. During her childhood, Mitski lived in Japan, Malaysia, China, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But it wasn’t until she returned to the U.S. that she had a racial designation imposed on her.
“I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,” says Mitski. “I didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.”
In the U.S., Mitski was regularly asked what most biracial people – her being half Japanese and half Caucasian American – are asked at least once in their lives: “What ARE you?” Mitski doesn’t particularly identify with American or Japanese culture, and her parents didn’t encourage her to choose or adopt either.
“I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way,” observes Mitski. “Being an outsider at the time nurtured my eye as a writer.”…
