Mixed Race Studies

‘War Baby’ is something to see, if you can let go

The Chicago Tribune
2013-05-08

Lori Waxman, Instructor of Art History, Theory and Criticism
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

It was the Hello Kitty tepee that did it for me.

Some exhibitions can be so challenging that it takes a particularly unexpected artwork for the viewer to finally let go and get into the swing of things. “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” currently up at the DePaul Art Museum and featuring work by a dozen-and-a-half artists, is one such show. A riotously colored digital print by Debra Yepa-Pappan featuring a purple-haired Native American woman, lifted from an iconic Edward S. Curtis photograph and set against a background of space-age tepees, one of them marked with the equally iconic and silent face of everybody’s favorite Japanese cat, is one such artwork.

Hilarious and weird and crazily of its time — i.e., now — Yepa-Pappan’s collage lifted my thoughts up and over the various stumbling blocks that “War Baby/Love Child” presents. Curated by Laura Kina, an artist and DePaul professor, and Wei Ming Dariotis, a professor of Asian-American Studies at San Francisco State University, the cogitative but overdetermined exhibition sets up a Catch-22. It wants to recognize the complex realities of a fast-growing segment of the American population — the 2.6 million who identify as Asian plus one or more other races — and to prove how far beyond stereotype those people go. And yet, two gargantuan cliches give their name to the exhibition itself.

The term “war babies” generally refers to the children of Asian or Pacific Islander women and the U.S. soldiers who were stationed in their home countries during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. “Love children” were born of the free love of a post-civil rights and flower-child era, and, as listed in the extensive exhibition catalog, their makeup includes Eurasians and Hapas (Mixed White Asians), Mixed Bloods (Mixed Asian Native Americans), Blasians (Mixed Black Asians) and Mestizaje (Mixed Latino Asians).

“War Baby/Love Child” thus finds itself in the counterintuitive position of wanting to replace its own title with a dozen less-loaded ones. Wall labels are one tool, and the ones here list an astonishing array of mixed identities as well as direct quotes from most of the artists, many of whom speak about personal experiences growing up amid racial presumption…

Read the entire article here.

‘Show Boat’ Steams On, Eternally American

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2013-05-07

Nina Totenberg, Legal Affairs Correspondent

It’s been more than eight decades since Show Boat — the seminal masterpiece of the American musical theater — premiered on a stage in Washington, D.C. Now the sprawling classic is back, in a lush production put on by the Washington National Opera.

Based on Edna Ferber’s epic best-selling novel, Show Boat was nothing like the frothy musicals and scantily clad Broadway revues of its time. Sure, the story is about a traveling showboat that plays to audiences along the Mississippi River, but the plot focuses on serious subjects: racial injustice, alcoholism, abandonment.

Panoramic in scale, the show spans 40 years, from 1885 in the South — not long after the Civil War — to the Roaring ’20s in Chicago. And displayed in all their glory are some of the most beautiful love songs of the 20th century: “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “Make Believe,” “Bill.”

Show Boat made musical-theater history, pioneering the merging of music and plot, integrating them for the first time to provide a seamless transition from scene to song. Lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, just 31 years old, worked closely with composer Jerome Kern to replicate Ferber’s sweeping narrative. In a 1958 interview released on vinyl by MGM Records, he explained how he used the Mississippi itself as the thread that would hold all the plot elements together.

“I thought that we lacked something to make it cohesive,” Hammerstein told interviewer Arnold Michaelis. “I wanted to keep the spirit of Edna’s book, and the one focal influence I could find was the river, because she had quite consciously brought the river into every important turn in the story. The Mississippi. So I decided to write a theme — a river theme.”

That theme, of course, became “Ol’ Man River,” one of the most primal American melodies ever sung.

‘Misery’ Restored, And Threaded Throughout The Show

Director Francesca Zambello, who pushed and prodded to get the current revival staged at the Kennedy Center, says she was drawn to the show because of the timeless issues it dramatizes — not least that key underlying theme of race, embodied in the show by Julie, the showboat’s star performer.

“Julie is the fulcrum of the show, because she brings the dramatic issue that changes everything,” Zambello says.

Secretly biracial, but “passing” — living publicly as a white woman — Julie has married a white man. That makes their relationship a crime in Mississippi, and in much of the rest of the country besides.

No surprise, then, that even before Julie is found out and forced to leave the showboat, the company’s mother figure, who’s in on her secret, senses trouble. “Misery’s comin’ around,” sings Queenie, the showboat’s cook, in a gorgeously melancholy melody that was cut from the original production for time.

“The theme of ‘Misery’ you hear not only with Queenie and all the women working, but it also weaves its way underneath the dialogue every time Julie speaks after that,” Zambello points out. “It becomes her sadness, and her secret.”

There are no U.S. laws against interracial marriage anymore; they were struck down in 1967 by the Supreme Court’s . But as Show Boat plays at the Kennedy Center this month, the court — just a couple of miles away — is considering questions of same-sex marriage, affirmative action and voting rights, while Congress focuses on how we as a nation treat immigrants.

“To do this kind of work that has such deep social underpinnings to it, and really speaks about social change, is I think rare in music theater,” Zambello says. “If you wrote this musical today, I’m not sure that it would get on.”…

Read the entire article here.  Listen to the story here.  Download the audio here.

Solo Show at UCSB’s MultiCultural Center Examines Notions of Racial Identity

Public Affairs & Communications
University of California, Santa Barbara
News Release
2013-05-01

Contact: Andrea Estrada: 805-893-4620; George Foulsham: 805-893-3071

Multimedia performance is produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

(Santa Barbara, Calif.)—When actress and playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni married the love of her life in 2006, her father did not walk her down the aisle. In fact, he declined to attend the wedding altogether.

Seeking to understand why he chose not to participate, DiGiovanni began a trek through family history—and time and space—that ultimately led to her M.F.A. thesis project: the multimedia one-woman play, “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval.”

DiGiovanni will perform the hour-long show at UC Santa Barbara’s MultiCultural Center Theater on Tuesday, May 7. The performance begins at 6 p.m. and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with G. Reginald Daniel, professor of sociology at UCSB. Daniels is a leading expert in the field of critical mixed race studies…

…A leading activist on issues related to mixed race, DiGiovanni is an actor, comedian, producer, and educator. She developed “One Drop of Love” as the thesis project for her Master of Fine Arts degree in film, television, and theater from California State University Los Angeles. She will use footage from her performances—the most recent was at the University of Maryland—to produce a documentary film…

Read the entire news release here.

One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval (at University of California, Santa Barbara)

University of California, Santa Barbara
MultiCultural Center Theater [Directions] [Map]
University Center, Room 1504
Tuesday, 2013-05-07, 18:00-20:00 PDT (Local Time)

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Jillian Pagan, Director

Produced by: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

Q&A afterwards hosted by:

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni returns to the West Coast after a phenomenally successful performance at the University of Maryland.

Incorporating filmed images, photographs and animation, this one-woman show tells the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the U.S., and its effects on the narrator’s relationship with her father—a journey that will take audiences from the 1600s to the present, to cities all over the U.S. and to West and East Africa, where both father and daughter spent time in search of their ‘racial’ roots.

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. ^©2103, Evan Tamayo

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni is a leading activist concerning mixed race, and is an actor, comedian, producer and educator. One Drop of Love is her MFA thesis, and she will be using footage from her performances to make a documentary.

Fanshen and her father after University of Maryland performance. (2013-03-29). ^©2013, Marvin T. Jones

Ms. Cox DiGiovanni appeared in the 2013 Academy Award and Golden Globe winning film Argo (2012); co-created, co-produced and co-hosted the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat (2007-2012); and co-founded and produced the annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival^® (2008-20012). For more on Ms. Cox DiGiovanni and One Drop of Love, visit: http://www.onedropoflove.org.

G. Reginald Daniel is a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a leading expert in field of critical mixed race studies. He received the 2012 Loving Prize from the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival in Los Angeles for his lifelong work as a scholar and participant within the multiracial community. He is the author of More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (Temple University Press, 2001) and Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). He is also the author of over 40 chapters and articles dealing with the topic of multiraciality. His latest book is Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).

Fanshen and her parents after University of Maryland performance (2013-03-29). ^©2013, Michael J. Hardy

Admission is free.

For more information, click here.

Interview: Nia King, “Bodies on the Line”

Mixed Reader: A blog of mixed race literature
2013-04-27

Tali Weinberg

Nia King is multimedia producer with a passion for social justice. She started out as a zinester writing about mixed-race identity, made a short film about searching for trans-friendly housing in the Bay Area, and has recently transitioned into journalism. Her ongoing projects include a web comic about her interracial relationship, and a podcast about queer and trans art activists of color. Feminist textile artist Tali Weinberg, an MFA student at California College of Art, recently interviewed Nia for part of her thesis on women art activists in the Bay Area. Below is an abridged transcript of the interview.

Do you consider yourself part of a certain activist or artistic lineage?

 As a queer, mixed-race woman of color who’s an ex-punk and an ex-anarchist I feel like there’s lots of different things that I draw from, some of which have nothing to do with my identity. Jaime Hernandez is definitely my biggest influence in terms of my comics. He and his brother do a series of comics called Love and Rockets. His branch of the Love and Rockets franchise is about these two young queer punk rockers growing up outside LA, I think one of them is Chicana and the other is Colombian and Scottish. For me as a young punk growing up in a white scene, seeing queer women of color represented in comics as actual people was a really amazing thing.

 I also really love the visual art. Every panel looks like something you could put up on a wall, which is not something you see with all comics. There’s a really strong graphic style with a lot of solid black and white shapes that are really sort of distinct visually and that’s something I also really draw from…

Read the entire interview here.

Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity

RUSH Arts Gallery
526 West 26th St, #311
New York, New York
Phone: 212-691-9552
2013-04-04 through 2013-05-10

Opening Reception: Thursday, 2013-04-04, 18:00-20:00 EDT (Local Time)
Artist Talk: Saturday, 2013-05-04, 16:00-18:00 EDT (Local Time)

Firelei Báez, Yael Ben-Zion, Cecile Chong, Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, Nicky Enright, Lorra Jackson, Sara Jimenez, and Saya Woolfalk

Curated by Gabriel de Guzman

The 2010 census shows a 32 percent increase since 2000 of Americans who identify themselves as belonging to a multiracial background. They represent the growing multiracial diversity that has become more evident in our country and in our communities during the Obama era. Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity features artists whose work expresses various aspects of their diverse, yet highly individual backgrounds. The exhibition attempts to move beyond the polarized discussions of race and identity politics of the 1980s and 90s and past the limitations imposed by political correctness. It also contests the idea of a “post-racial” society presented by political commentators after the election of Barack Obama. In the four years since the biracial president’s first inauguration, race has remained a critical and contentious topic in national politics. Challenging a monolithic view of race, this exhibition examines contemporary issues of identity, hybridism, and racial ambiguity. At times the artists in the show directly tackle issues that relate to race and cultural awareness. At other times, the artists deal with these issues subtly by acknowledging the spread of multiculturalism in our global society and the ways in which race and ethnicity are fluid and dependent upon perception and context…

Read the entire announcement here.

Exclusive: Sonia Rolland talks activism, new film

Euromight: Your Guide to Afro-Europe
2013-04-15

Epée Hervé Dingong

Sonia Rolland, (Miss France 2000), is an actress and model who has been outspoken about racial issues in the film and fashion industries, and in the media. In this exclusive interview she talks about her work, politics and what it means to be “black” in France.

After being Miss France how did you become a successful actress?

It took a lot of work because I had to convince the acting community that a beauty queen could be an actress. I always wanted to act, but becoming Miss France wasn’t the right way to pursue that goal. When you’ve been Miss France you have always that label. Determination and willingness were the keys and today people talk about me as an actress…

…Do you think you would have more roles in if you were not black or a woman?

It’s not clear-cut when you are mixed race because they don’t know where to put you. If I was totally black I would be put in that category, but I’m mixed, so that’s another thing for them to deal with. However, I was Miss France. Though advantages can mean more difficulties, but that doesn’t stop me. It makes me stronger. I’ve done many projects including Desordres, (her new film) and this summer I’ll be in Michigan shooting a movie called “Radio Days” where I play a French Senegalese woman, then I’ll appear in French filmmaker Tavernier’s movie Quai D’Orsay. I also do the Mixa commercial on TV, which gives me permanent visibility…

Read the entire interview here.

Artists explore the image of mixed race Asian-Americans in DePaul exhibit

Medill Reports, Chicago
2013-04-18

Zhiyu Wang

Medill Reports is written and produced by graduate journalism students at Northwestern University’s Medill school.

In college, Wei Ming Dariotis used to want a T-shirt with “war baby” on the front and “love child” on the back. That way whenever people asked her “what are you?” she could just point to the T-shirt and say, “take your pick.”

Now her imaginary T-shirt has turned into an actual exhibition. The “War Baby/Love Child” show at DePaul University features artworks from 19 contemporary artists, all of whom are of mixed heritage, meaning either they are mixed-raced or they are transracial adoptees.

“This is part of a beginning that people can see visually what it means to be mixed raced,” said Debra Yepa-Pappan, a Jemez Pueblo and Korean artist who lives in Chicago.

The title “War Baby/Love Child” comes from the experience Dariotis, co-curator and associate professor of Asian-American studies at San Francisco State University, had when she was young. When she said her mom is Chinese and her father is Greek /Swedish /English /Scottish /German /Pennsylvania Dutch, people would always ask, “did your parents meet in the war?”…

Read the entire article here.

Opening 4/25: “War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art”

DePaul Art Museum
Chicago, Illinois
2013-04-16

CHICAGO — The DePaul Art Museum explores the construction of mixed-heritage Asian American identity in the United States with “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” which opens April 25.

“It gives visibility to the increasingly mixed generation coming of age by highlighting artworks that map personal biography and the construction of mixed heritage Asian American identity against U.S. and transnational histories,” said Laura Kina, exhibit curator. Kina is a Vincent de Paul Professor and founding member of Global Asian Studies at DePaul University, where she also is an associate professor of art, media and design in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

An opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. April 25 at the museum, located at 935 W. Fullerton Ave., just east of the CTA’s Fullerton ‘L’ stop. The museum is free and open to the public every day. The exhibition runs through June 30.

“Through traditional media as well as video, installation and other approaches, artists explore a range of topics, including U.S. wars in Asia, multiculturalism and identity politics, racialization, gender and sexual identity, citizenship and nationality, and transracial adoption,” said Kina. She co-edited a book of the same title with Wei Ming Dariotis, an associate professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Mequitta Ahuja, Albert Chong, Serene Ford, Kip Fulbeck, Stuart Gaffney, Louie Gong, Jane Jin Kaisen, Lori Kay, Li-Lan, Richard Lou, Samia Mirza, Chris Naka, Laurel Nakadate, Gina Osterloh, Adrienne Pao, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, Amanda Ross-Ho, Jenifer Wofford and Debra Yepa-Pappan…

Read the entire press release here.

SNAPSHOT: “a true story of love interrupted by invasion”

Greenway Court Theatre
544. N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, California
2013-04-04 through 2013-04-21

Mitzi Sinnott

A daughter’s journey through a landscape of years, memories and realities, initiated by her questioning, “what do I know about war?”  The answers are lying in an album of faded photos of her absent father, who left for the Vietnam War before she was born.  Fusing words, dance, music and film this story chronicles the quest of a mixed-race daughter from Southern Appalachia who eventually finds her homeless Veteran father suffering in Hawaii.

Her growing insights reveal how the forces of history, race and war affected herself and her family, and the torn fragments of her life begin to re-connect. SNAPSHOT honors her father and other Vietnam Veterans who have been lost under the avalanche of history. This play is a daring look at the truth of our past and an inspiring example of the need for us to reconcile our history—one life at time.

For more information, click here.