Mixed Race Studies

Prove you’re Japanese: when being bicultural can be a burden

The Japan Times
2013-07-29

Louise George Kittaka

Parents’ decision to add a katakana name can create issues when kids enter the big wide world

Japanese are Japanese and foreigners are foreigners, and never the twain shall meet? In many aspects of daily life in this country, there is one way for the Japanese and another for the rest of us. Like it or not, that’s just how it is. At least foreigners know where we stand.

However, bicultural individuals — the children of one Japanese and one foreign parent — may find that life isn’t quite that simple.

Although they were born, raised and educated in Japan, and as Japanese citizens are entitled to all the legal privileges that entails, society sometimes marginalizes them in ways that their foreign parents may not have anticipated. Japanese television shows and commercials might be full of cute “half” young adults, but back in the real world, being a bit “different” isn’t always such a good thing when you are trying to make your way in this country…

Read the entire article here.

War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art

curated by:

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

Wei Ming Dariotis, Associate Professor Asian American Studies
San Francisco State University

Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
2013-08-09 through 2014-01-19
719 S. King Street Seattle, WA 98104
206-623-5124

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 8, 2013 @ 6-8pm

Join us for the opening reception of War Baby/Love Child on Thursday, August 8. Curators Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis will be in attendance, as will exhibiting artists Louie Gong, Richard Lou, Stuart Gaffney, Jenifer Wofford, and Lori Kay.

You are invited to the 6-7pm preview and reception program. Light refreshments will be served. Please send in an RSVP to Maria Martinez or call 206.623.5124, ext 107.

7-8pm Open to the public (no RSVP needed). Free admission.

This exhibition brings together works by 19 artists, highlighting different approaches to the identities and experiences of mixed Asian Americans, mixed Pacific Islander Americans and Asian transracial adoptees. While their biographies are varied and often diverge from the dominant stereotypes of mixed Asian identities, their lives are shaped by the specific histories of Asian Pacific-U.S. collisions: narratives of war, economic and political migration and colonization. As an ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation comes of age in a world fixated on post-racial politics and moving beyond issues of identity, War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art examines how artists engage various facets of hybridity in their artwork.

Artists: 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, Debra Yepa-Pappan.

Read more about the exhibition here.

Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches, Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania or Races and Upon their Natural, Geographical, Philological and Biblical History [Second Edition]

Lippincott, Grambo & Co.
1854
738 pages

J. C. Nott, M.D.
Mobile, Alabama

Geo. R. Gliddon, Egyptologist
Former U.S. Consul to Egypt

CONTENTS

• FRONTISPIECE — Portrait or Samuel George Morton. [Steel Engraving.]
• DEDICATION–“To the Memory of Morton”
• PREFACE — by Geo. B. Gliddon
  • Postscriptum — by J. C. Nott
• MEMOIR—” Notice of the Life and Scientific Labors of the late Samuel Geo. Morton, M. D.”—contributed by Prof. Henry S. Patterson, M.D.
• SKETCH —” of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and their Relation to the different Types of Man” — contributed by Prof. L. Agassie, LL.D. [With colored lithographic Tableau and Map.]
• INTRODUCTION to ” Types of Mankind ” — by J. C. Nott
• PART I.
  • I. — Biographical Distribution or Animals and the Races of Men
  • II. — General Remarks on the Types of Mankind
  • III. Specific Types — Caucasian
  • IV. — Physical History of the Jews
  • V. — the Caucasian Types carried through Egyptian Monuments
  • VI. — African Types
  • VII. — Egypt and Egyptians. [Four Lithographic Plates]
  • VIII. — Negro Types
  • IX. — American and other Types — Aboriginal Races of America
  • X. — Excerpta from Morton’s Inedited Manuscripts
  • XI. — Geology and Palæontology, in Connection with Human Origins — contributed by William Usher, M.D.
  • XII. — Hybridity or Animals, viewed in Connection with the Natural History or Mankind — by J. C. Nott
  • XIII. — Comparative Anatomy or Races — by J. C. Nott
• PART II.
  • XIV.— The Xth Chapter of Genesis — Preliminary Remarks
    • Sect. A. — Analysis of the Hebrew Nomenclature
    • B. — Observations on, the annexed Genealogical Tableau of the “Sons of Noah”
      • Genealogical Tableau
    • C. — Observations on the accompanying “Map of the World”
      • Lithographic tinted Map, exhibiting the Countries more or less known to the ancient Writer of Xth Genesis
    • D. — the Xth Chapter of Genesis modernized, in its Nomenclature, to display popularly, and in Modern English, the Meaning of its ancient Writer
  • XV. — Biblical Ethnography:–
    • Sect. E. — Terms, universal and specific
    • F. — Structure of Genesis I., II., and III
    • G.—Cosmas-Indicopleustes
      • Cosmas’s Map [wood-cut]
    • H.—Antiquity of the Name “ADaM”
• PART III. — Supplement — by Geo. R. Gleddon
  • Essay I. — Archæological Introduction to the Xth Chapter of Genesis.
  • II — Palaeographic Excursus on thb Art op Writing.
    • Table — “Theory of the Order of Development in Human Writings”
  • III. — Mankind’s Chronology:—
    • Introductory
    • Chronology — Egyptian
    • Chinese
    • Assyrian
    • Hebrew
    • Hindoo
• APPENDIX I. — Notes and References to Parts I. and II.
• II. — Alphabetical List of Subscribers to “Types of Mankind”