Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
A ‘Marginal Man’ is a fictional archetype created in 1927 by sociologist Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944) (and further developed by Everett Stonequist (1901-1979)) as a way to describe a person descended from two “opposing” ethnic or racial groups. He stated, “The marginal man…is one whom fate has condemned to live in two societies and in two, not merely different but antagonistic cultures….his mind is the crucible in which two different and refractory cultures may be said to melt and, either wholly or in part, fuse.” The arc for ‘Marginal Man’ was similar to that of the ‘Tragic Mulatto‘ because he too, attempted to “pass” as white, however he could change course and take a hypodescendent path and if he were fortunate become a leader of his “lesser” lot.
“I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,” says Mitski [Miyawaki]. “I didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.”
Mitski Miyawaki, who performs with her band under her first name, grew up in a biracial, multicultural household. During her childhood, Mitski lived in Japan, Malaysia, China, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But it wasn’t until she returned to the U.S. that she had a racial designation imposed on her.
“I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,” says Mitski. “I didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.”
In the U.S., Mitski was regularly asked what most biracial people – her being half Japanese and half Caucasian American – are asked at least once in their lives: “What ARE you?” Mitski doesn’t particularly identify with American or Japanese culture, and her parents didn’t encourage her to choose or adopt either.
“I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way,” observes Mitski. “Being an outsider at the time nurtured my eye as a writer.”…