Mixed Race Studies

United States of the United Races – Great Resource for Storytellers

Mixed Roots Stories: Strengthening and celebrating diverse Mixed communities through the power of sharing stories
2013-10-02

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Greg Carter, The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing (New York: New York University Press, 2013)

When discovering the strongest submissions for the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, one thing always stood out for me: the storyteller (filmmaker, author, performer) had a solid understanding of the historical context behind the story they were telling. Although many of the personal narratives were compelling, it was often clear when the creator of the work hadn’t delved into the historical reasons why they found themselves in a certain time and space. This often made the work feel lacking in some way.

Enter Greg Carter’s United States of the United Races – an antidote to celebrations of the mixed experience that lack the important weight of context. The Introduction examines how President Obama – and many others – have capitalized on his being mixed, “he piggybacked onto positive notions about racially mixed people to improve his symbolic power.” Carter makes his goals for the book clear here: 1) to show that racial mixture has a long history of being touted as a way towards progress and 2) to question the notion that racial mixture automatically equals progress…

Read the entire review here.

One Drop of Love: A Multimedia Solo Performance on Racial Identity by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni at James R. Fitzgerald Theater

James R. Fitzgerald Theater
Cambridge Rindge & Latin School
459 Broadway
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Friday, 2013-08-30, 19:30 EDT (Local Time)

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Jillian Pagan, Director

Produced by: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

How does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships?

One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for her Father’s Racial Approval is a multimedia solo show that journeys from the U.S. to East & West Africa and from 1790 to the present as a culturally Mixed woman explores the influence of the “one -drop rule” on her family and society.

For more information, click here.

A Review of One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval

Gino Michael Pellegrini: Education, Race, Multiraciality, Class & Solidarity
2013-05-08

Gino Michael Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

Is Fanshen a noun, a verb, or an adjective? Is it a who or a what? What does it have to do with the history of race and racism? Or, as Grandma Cynthia puts it, “De next time you talk to your mommy an’ your daddy, ahsk dem for me – what in God’s name is a Fanshen?…Why dem give you dat name?”

These are some of the central questions that Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni addresses in her brilliant and timely one-woman show, One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval.

I am present for Fanshen’s debut performance on Saturday, March 9, 2013 at the Arena Theater on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles. The Arena is small, intimate, packed, and a few people have traveled across the country to see this debut. I sit in the front row with my good friend Rocco Robinson, and we notice right away that the audience is relaxed, friendly, and excited; the set is simple, arousing, and well thought out.

Fanshen is an educator, a writer, a film maker, and an accomplished actor who recently played a part in Argo, the Academy’s Best Picture for 2012. Fanshen is also well known within the nascent multiracial community for being the co-creator and co-host (with Heidi Durrow) of the award-winning podcast series, Mixed Chicks Chat (2007-2012) and of the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival (2008-2012). Both projects have been instrumental in making the public more aware of the so-called mixed experience, and of the growing number of critical and creative works about multiracial lives and issues.

Both collaborative projects have also been a means for Fanshen and Heidi to come to a deeper understanding of their own mixed experiences and identities, which, in turn, has facilitated the development of their own creative works. Heidi was the first Mixed Chick to gain national recognition for her bestselling novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (2010). Now it is Fanshen’s turn to deconstruct longstanding racial assumptions, traditions, and allegiances with her own hybrid, experimental work.

One Drop of Love emphasizes the history of the construct of race from the 1700s to the present. More specifically, the interrelated American history of race and the decennial Census constitutes the factual and visual backdrop against which Fanshen performs her own personal history and evolution. Fanshen plays herself at different junctures in her life and, using multiple dialects and gestures, fifteen other characters (including her family) of different ages, genders, nationalities, and ethno-racial-cultural backgrounds. Though the subject matter is difficult, her acting ability helps her engage, entertain, touch, and enthrall her audience. Considered altogether, her multiple character depictions and interactions expose into view how the history of race–in conjunction with a shared belief in static racial categories, values, identities, and traditions–impacts intimate relationships, social opportunities, self-perception, and personal growth…

Read the entire review here.

“One Drop of Love” is Fanshen’s Story & She’s Sticking To It

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-07-17, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Join us on today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio as we meet award-winning actor, producer and educator, Fanshen Cox. Fanshen is currently touring the one-woman show she wrote and performs in: One Drop of Love, which is produced by Ben Affleck, Chay Carter and Matt Damon.

One Drop follows Fanshen’s journey to reconciliation with her father, taking audiences from the 1700s to the present and through various locations near and far—all in search of how our belief in ‘race’ affects our most precious intimate relationships.

Fanshen is also the co-creator of the Mixed Chicks Chat podcast (named a top podcast by Ebony magazine and the Black Weblog Awards) and co-founder of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival^®—a five-year festival celebrating its final event in 2012. She won a 2012 SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast (for the film Argo).

Fanshen served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years in Cape Verde, West Africa as a teacher, and has taught in and designed curricula for over 15 years. She holds a BA in Spanish and Education, an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and just earned her MFA in Acting and Performance in Film, TV and Theater. Fanshen is dedicated to constantly questioning the notion of ‘race’ and fighting racism through storytelling.

For more information, click here.

Mixed Chicks Chat with Professor Rudy Guevarra

Mixed Chicks Chat (Founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival)
Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Episode: #261: Rudy Guevarra
When: Wednesday, 2012-06-20, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Assistant Professor, Asian Pacific American Studies, School of Social Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Arizona State University, Tempe

[This is the final episode of Mixed Chicks Chat.]

Rudy P. Guevarra Jr. is an assistant professor of Asian Pacific American Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of Filipinos in San Diego: Images of America Series, and coeditor of Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific and Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide.

His new book, Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego, is a social-historical interpretation of two ethnic groups, one Mexican, the other Filipino, whose paths led both groups to San Diego, California. Rudy P. Guevarra Jr. traces the earliest interactions of both groups with Spanish colonialism to illustrate how these historical ties and cultural bonds laid the foundation for what would become close interethnic relationships and communities in twentieth-century California and the Pacific West Coast. Through racially restrictive covenants, both groups were confined to segregated living spaces along with African Americans, other Asian groups, and a few European immigrant clusters. Within these urban multiracial spaces, Mexicans and Filipinos coalesced to build a world of their own. Mexipino children, living simultaneously in two cultures, have forged a new identity for themselves and their lives are the lens through which these two communities are examined. Using archival sources, oral histories, newspapers, and personal collections and photographs, Guevarra defines the niche that this particular group carved out for itself.

Listen to the episode (00:33:22) here. Download the episode here.

‘One Drop of Love’ (Theatre Review)

The Chic of Domesticity: A Woman-to-Women Conversation on All Facets of Life – Fashion – Politics – Religion – Style – Travel
2013-06-29

Jennifer Vaughn-Estrada

Plans free for tomorrow evening? I recommend catching the final performance of One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Race is an uncomfortable, and often confusing, subject for us “mixies,” and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, co-founder of the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival, addresses it head on in this one-woman play about identities, stereotypes, and family frustrations…

Read the entire review here.

Solo Show at 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival Examines Notions of Racial Identity

Contact: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni
Email: onedropoflove@gmail.com
Website: http://www.onedropoflove.com/
May 2013

(Los Angeles, 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 on Friday, June 21st at 2:30 p.m., Friday, June 28th at 4:15 p.m. and Sunday, June 30th at 6:00 p.m. at the Lounge Theatres (www.hollywoodfringe.org/venues/11). The cost of the two Friday perrformances is $12 per ticket. The Sunday show is a fundraiser for MASC – Multiracial Americans of Southern California (www.mascsite.org) – all proceeds ($15 per ticket) will go to MASC. This show is also a Los Angeles celebration of Loving Day (www.lovingday.org).

Incorporating filmed images, photographs, and animation DiGiovanni tells the story of how the notion of race came into existence in the United States, and its effects on her relationship with her father. To tell her story, DiGiovanni travels back in time to the first US census in 1790, to cities across the United States, and to West and East Africa, where both father and daughter spent time in search of their racial roots. A leading activist on issues related to mixed cultures and ethnicities, 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 California, Santa Barbara—to produce a documentary film. DiGiovanni, who appeared in the Academy Award-winning film “Argo,” is also the co-creator, co-producer, and co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat, and co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Fm & Literary Festival^®.

Read the entire press release here.

One Drop of Love

Hollywood Fringe Festival
L.A.’s Largest Celebration of the Performing Arts
2013-06-13 through 2013-06-30

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Jillian Pagan, Director

Produced by: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

Performances:

Friday 2013-06-21, 14:30 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

Friday 2013-06-28, 16:15 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

Sunday 2013-06-30, 18:00 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo show that journeys from the U.S. to East & West Africa and from 1790 to the present as a culturally Mixed woman explores the influence of the “one -drop rule” on her family and society. All proceeds from the Sunday, June 30th show will go to MASC – Multiracial Americans of Southern California – in celebration of Loving Day.

For more information, click here.

‘One Drop of Love’ Creates Ripple Effect at UCSB

The Bottom Line
Weekly Newspaper of Associated Students, UC Santa Barbara: News, Features, Video & Investigative Journalism for UCSB
2013-05-13

Yuen Sin, Staff Writer

The personal is very much the political, as actress-playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni illustrated through her solo show “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for her Father’s Racial Approval.” The show was performed at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Multicultural Center on May 7.

First formulated as a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) thesis project, “One Drop of Love” began as Cox DiGiovanni’s personal attempt to revive her estranged relationship with her Jamaica-born father, who failed to show up at her wedding years before.

What ensued was a powerful multimedia, one-woman play laced with wit, warmth, and depth that fused her fragmented experiences with racial and cultural dispossession into a coherent narrative. The multidimensional show traversed back into the years of Cox DiGiovanni’s family history to untangle the weight of the socio-political events that have inevitably contributed to a crucial part of her identity and self-perceptions today…

…Cox DiGiovanni slipped in and out of multiple roles with dexterity, first imperiously bearing down at the audience as an anonymous U.S. Census Bureau officer, and then staggering affectionately across the stage with a lilting accent as her grandmother, revealing through her impressions the fluid and ultimately arbitrary nature of identity labels.

Her personal trajectory of “placelessness”—not seeing herself as “black” enough to join the Black Students Union, and yet having candy vendors in Cape Verde, West Africa, come up to her (while on a pilgrimage of sorts to trace back her African roots and understand her father’s pan-African attitudes) to ask her why she was so “white”—was interspersed with scenes that traced the evolution of the practice of racial categorization by the U.S. Census Bureau. The contrast brought to the forefront her sense of frustration from continually being racially defined by others, and the puzzling practice of placing someone in the category of “black” as long as they possessed even “one drop” of Negro blood—hence the play’s title.

At the post-show dialogue with UCSB’s professor of sociology G. Reginald Daniel, Cox DiGiovanni reiterated the importance of engaging in “scary conversations about race and racism,” reflecting that her work producing and performing “One Drop of Love” completely transformed the nature of her family relations after their involvement in her show…

Read the entire review here.

Acclaimed Actress Performs Play on Race, Love

The Daily Nexus
University of California, Santa Barbara’s Independent, Student Run Newspaper
2013-05-08

Carissa Quiambao

William Zhou / Daily Nexus

Award-winning actress and playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni performed her one-woman play, “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval” at the UCSB Multicultural Center Theater yesterday evening.

DiGiovanni, who has appeared in the Academy Award-winning film “Argo,” is the co-creator and co-host of award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat and a co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival.

Her solo performance, “One Drop of Love,” co-produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter, begins with DiGiovanni counting the number of “whites” and “blacks” in the audience in a portrayal of a United States Census Bureau employee in 1790, then transitions into her present-day narrative meeting her husband and getting married in 2006, only to have her father decline attending her wedding…

…DiGiovanni alternates between scenes of racial categorization by the U.S. Census Bureau in the late 1700s and her personal narrative about growing up as a multiracial youth in cities across the United States and in West and East Africa. Using filmed images, photographs and animation, she explains the development of “race” in the U.S. and how it affected her identity and her relationship with her black, Jamaican father.

Over the course of the play, DiGiovanni explores her family history in order to reconstruct her racial identity and confront her father about his absence at her wedding. She said this process gave her insight into her heritage and ultimately allowed her to feel more comfortable with her personal identity.

“Today, especially having done this and reconnected with my dad, I feel stronger in my black identity as well as in my mixed identity,” DiGiovanni said. “I feel stronger, and I feel so much more relaxed about it. Unfortunately, it took a long time, and it might take you guys a long time, but just know that you will feel comfortable at some point. I think the sooner we can all get there, it will really help in terms of looking at racism.”…

Read the entire article here.