Mixed Race Studies

Hybridity and Whiteness in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Volume 7, Issue 3 (September 2005)
9 pages

Heather Latimer
Simon Fraser University

In her paper, “Hybridity and Whiteness” in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural, Heather Latimer examines the autobiographical collection Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural assembled and edited by Claudine C. O’Hearn. Latimer’s analysis reveals how current models of hybridity theory are performed, articulated, and exemplified in the texts of O’Hearn’s volume. In her analysis, Latimer explores the anxiety and tension about whiteness within hybridity theory, often reflected in the performance of hybrid aesthetics. Latimer argues that while some authors in Half and Half avoid talking about whiteness as a way to establish legitimate hybrid identities, this avoidance actually resinscribes an authenticity to their identities which in turn replicates the very oppressive processes of identity formation they are attempting to write against. Latimer sees other authors in the volume, however, as disrupting the stability and invisibility of whiteness by performing a type of hybridity that makes visible the made-up and constructed nature of all racial identities.

Read the entire article here.

Half + Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural

Pantheon an imprint of Random House
1998-06-09
288 pages
ISBN: 978-0-375-70011-8 (0-375-70011-0)

Edited by Claudine C. O’Hearn

As we approach the twenty-first century, biracialism and biculturalism are becoming increasingly common.  Skin color and place of birth are no longer reliable signifiers of one’s identity or origin.  Simple questions like What are you? and Where are you from? aren’t answered—they are discussed.  These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address the difficulties of not fitting into and the benefits of being part of two worlds.  Through the lens of personal experience, they offer a broader spectrum of meaning for race and culture.  And in the process, they map a new ethnic terrain that transcends racial and cultural division.

Table of Contents

• Introduction by Claudine Chiawei O’Hearn
• LOST IN PLACE by Garrett Hongo
• THE MULATTO MILLENNIUM by Danzy Senna
• THE DOUBLE HELIX by Roxane Farmanfarmaian
• CALIFORNIA PALMS by le thi diem thuy
• MORO LIKE ME by Francisco Goldman
• THE ROAD FROM BALLYGUNGE by Bharati Mukherjee
• REFLECTIONS ON MY DAUGHTER by David Mura
• LIFE AS AN ALIEN by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
• LOST IN THE MIDDLE by Malcolm Gladwell
• THE FUNERAL BANQUET by Lisa See
• A WHITE WOMAN OF COLOR by Julia Alvarez
• A MIDDLE PASSAGE by Philippe Wamba
• FOOD AND THE IMMIGRANT by Indira Ganesan
• WHAT COLOR IS JESUS? by James McBride
• POSTCARDS FROM “HOME” by Lori Tsang
• FROM HERE TO POLAND by Nina Mehta
• TECHNICOLOR by Ruben Martinez
• AN ETHNIC  TRUMP by Gish Jen
• About the Authors