Mixed Race Studies

Naked Bodies, Bodies of History

Hyphen Magazine: Asian America Unabridged
2013-06-27

Jenny Lee

“She mimics the speaking. That might resemble speech. (Anything at all.) Bared noise, groan, bits torn from words…From the back of her neck she releases her shoulders free.  She swallows once more.”

So begins the story of the halting diseuse, or female storyteller, of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s genre-defying text Dictée, first published just over three decades ago in 1982. Organized in nine parts named after the Greek Muses, Dictée has been described in mythic terms – a Korean Odyssey, a rewriting of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, a theatrical ritual, a shamanistic exorcism.  Above all, however, Cha’s work interrogates history, refracting the history of Korea in the twentieth century through the themes of exile, the displacement of colonized bodies, and the lost – and resurrected – bodies and voices of women…

…I must have had Dictée on the brain, because I thought of Cha’s work again a few weeks ago when I dropped by the DePaul Art Museum to see the exhibit War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, curated by DePaul and San Francisco State University professors  Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis. The exhibit is part of a larger project that features visual media produced by nineteen artists who hail from the rapidly expanding community of 2.6 million Americans (and counting) who identify as Asian American plus one or more ethno-racial groups. While the exhibit blurb explains that the show “examines the construction of mixed heritage Asian American identity in the United States,” this actually doesn’t do justice to its ambitious range, which not only investigates the historical origins of these identities (U.S. wars in Asia, colonialism, transnational adoption, the 1967 Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia outlawing laws against interracial marriage) but breaks down insidious present-day theories about “post-racialness,” while also featuring work by a younger generation of artists who seem to stay out of the conversation completely.  

In an interview, Dariotis revealed that the title of the exhibit was inspired by her own experience fielding annoying questions about her background (which, incidentally, is Chinese, Greek, Swedish, English, Scottish, German, and Dutch). According to Dariotis, people would inquire whether her parents “met in the war.” “And I always ask myself, ha, I was born in 1969, we were not at war with China in 1969. Where did they get this image?” Dariotis’s story highlights persistent mainstream assumptions about mixed-race (if not mixed-ethnic) Asian Americans of a certain age as either/or – that is, either the product of military personnel and Asian women, or free-love hippies indulging in illegal interracial sex. If Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show offers a critique of the sexualizing of women’s bodies, War Baby/Love Child draws attention to the cultural sexualization of specifically Asian (and mostly female) bodies through the bodies of their mixed-race offspring…

Read the entire article here.

‘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.

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.

Talkin’ Race with Laura and Wei Ming

The Magic Mulatto: Bringing the fine art of Race Talk straight to the people
2013-03-26

Brett Russell Coleman, Doctoral Student of Community & Prevention Research
University of Illinois, Chicago

“In 1969, we weren’t at war with China.”

If that sentence leaves you perplexed in any way, you need to do two things. First listen to the audio of the conversation I had with Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis…

…The second thing you need to do is check out their project, War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, which investigates constructions of mixed heritage Asian American identity in the United States. This is a “multi-platform project (book, traveling art exhibition, website and blog) that examines how, or even if, mixed heritage Asian Americans address hybrid identities in their artwork, as well as how perspectives from critical mixed race studies illuminate intersections of racialization, war and imperialism, gender and sexuality, and citizenship and nationality.”…

Read the article and listen to the interview here.

AAS 550: Asian Americans of Mixed Heritages

San Francisco State University
Spring 2012

Wei Ming Dariotis, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies

This is an interactive, dynamic course taught in a seminar style with an expectation of active student participation. Group work and interaction are emphasized in order to provide students with real life problem solving opportunities. Creative and analytical approaches are both emphasized through Reading Response Essays, a Midterm Group Play, Research Portfolio and related Presentation, and Final Class Project (creating a Hapa Children’s Book). Topics covered in this course may include a selection of the following:

• The history of anti-miscegenation in the US, particularly as such laws relate to the Asian Pacific American experience; stereotypes of APIs [Asian-Pacific Islanders] of mixed heritage
• the history of US and European war and colonialism in relation to APIs of mixed heritage
• the “war bride” phenomenon
• TransRacial/transnational adoption; Hapas in Hawai’i
• Double Minority Hapas
• Queer Hapas
• Hapa Bodies (body image and health issues)
• Hapa Creative/Cultural expression
• Mixed Heritage activism and social and political organizations

This course explores the Historical, Cross-Cultural and Global Contexts relevant to Asian Pacific Americans of mixed heritage. AAS 550 is designed to present students with cross cultural and historical perspectives which will permit students to empathize with Asians Pacifics of mixed heritage, across a wide variety of historical circumstances and personal experiences. The inherently multiethnic nature of the subject matter allows students to develop an appreciation of an emerging sub-dominant group (APIs of mixed heritage or Hapas) and recognition of the fundamental unity of humankind…

For more information, click here.

The JCMRS inaugural issue will be released on Summer, 2013

Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies
c/o Department of Sociology
SSMS Room 3005
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California  93106-9430
E-Mail: socjcmrs@soc.ucsb.edu
2012-10-10

The Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies (JCMRS) is a peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to developing the field of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) through rigorous scholarship. Launched in 2011, it is the first academic journal explicitly focused on Critical Mixed Race Studies.

JCMRS is transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational in focus and emphasizes the critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions and constructions of ‘race.’ JCMRS emphasizes the constructed nature and thus mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. JCMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.

Sponsored by University of California, Santa Barbara’s Sociology Department, JCMRS is hosted on the eScholarship Repository, which is part of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library. JCMRS functions as an open-access forum for critical mixed race studies scholars and will be available without cost to anyone with access to the Internet.

Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2013 will include:

• “Editor’s Note”—G. Reginald Daniel
• “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies”—Laura Kina, Wei Ming Dariotis, G. Reginald Daniel, and Camilla Fojas

Articles

1. “Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States”—Winthrop Jordan edited by Paul Spickard
2. “Retheorizing the Relationship Between New Mestizaje and New Multiraciality as Mixed Race Identity Models”—Jessie Turner
3. “Critical Mixed Race Studies: New Directions in the Politics of Race and Representation,” Keynote Address presented at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, November 5, 2010, DePaul University—Andrew Jolivétte
4. “Only the News We Want to Print”—Rainier Spencer
5. “The Current State of Multiracial Discourse”—Molly McKibbin
6. “Slimy Subjects and Neoliberal Goods”—Daniel McNeil

Editorial Board

Founding Editors: G. Reginald Daniel, Wei Ming Dariotis, Laura Kina, Maria P. P. Root, and Paul Spickard

Editor-in-Chief: G. Reginald Daniel

Managing Editors: Wei Ming Dariotis and Laura Kina

Editorial Review Board: Stanley R. Bailey, Mary C. Beltrán, David Brunsma, Greg Carter, Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Michele Elam, Camilla Fojas, Peter Fry, Kip Fulbeck, Rudy Guevarra, Velina Hasu Houston, Kevin R. Johnson, Andrew Jolivette, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain, Laura A. Lewis, Kristen A. Renn, Maria P. P. Root, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, Gary B. Nash, Kent A. Ono, Rita Simon, Miri Song, Rainier Spencer, Michael Thornton, Peter Wade, France Winddance Twine, Teresa Williams-León, and Naomi Zack

For more information, click here.

War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art

University of Washington Press
January 2013
304 pages
63 illustrations, 44 in color, maps
7 x 10 in.
ISBN: 978-0-295-99225-9

Edited 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

Cover art by Mequitta Ahuja

War Baby/Love Child examines hybrid Asian American identity through a collection of essays, artworks, and interviews at the intersection of critical mixed race studies and contemporary art. The book pairs artwork and interviews with nineteen emerging, mid-career, and established mixed race/mixed heritage Asian American artists, including Li-lan and Kip Fulbeck, with scholarly essays exploring such topics as Vietnamese Amerasians, Korean transracial adoptions, and multiethnic Hawai’i. As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age in an era of “optional identity,” this collection brings together first-person perspectives and a wider scholarly context to shed light on changing Asian American cultures.

Visit the website here.

Special Issue: Mixed Heritage Asian American Literature

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies
Volume 3 (2012): Special Issue: Mixed Heritage Asian American Literature

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Volume III—Wei Ming Dariotis
• The AALDP Interview
  • Smoke and Flowers: An Interview with Olivia Boler—Wei Ming Dariotis
• Articles
  • American Orientalism and Cosmopolitan Mixed Race: Early Asian American Mixed Race in the American Literary Imagination—Melissa Eriko Poulsen
  • The Making of a Eurasian: Writing, Miscegenation, and Redemption in Sui Sin Far—Juanita C. But
  • Betwixt and Between Past and Present: Cultural and Generic Hybridity in the Fiction of Mary Yukari Waters—Rania Samir Youssef
  • Revisiting Local History and Ghostly Memory in Shawna Yang Ryan’s Locke 1928—Chia-rong Wu
  • Realizing blacknpinay: Negotiating Notions of Authenticity in Janet Stickmon’s Crushing Soft Rubies—Teresa Hodges
  • The Abjection of James Dean: Mixed Media/Mixed Race Performances in Ai’s Poem, “James Dean”—Cathy Irwin
  • Multiracial Male Masculinity: A Critical Mixed Race Analysis of Brian Ascalon Roley’s “American Son”—Kevin Escudero
  • Teaching Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft: Exploring the Limits of Race and Ethnicity—Jaime Cleland
  • Disturbing Stereotypes: Fu Man/Chan and Dragon Lady Blossoms—Audrey Wu Clark
  • Excursus on “Hapa;” or the Fate of Identity—Nicole Myoshi Rabin
  • A Hapa Family in Chekhov’s Three Sisters—Elizabeth Liang
• Reviews
  • Review: This is All I Choose To Tell—Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

Read the entire issue here.

Teaching Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far: Multiple Approaches

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies
Volume 1 (2010)
pages 70-78

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

This essay compares pedagogical approaches to teaching the literature of Edith Eaton in two distinct contexts: a course on Asian American Literature and a course on Asian Americans of Mixed Heritage.  This is a comparison of the variant pedagogical approaches in these two different contexts.

Read the entire article here.