{"id":23721,"date":"2012-06-11T21:32:48","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T21:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23721"},"modified":"2013-06-09T15:27:21","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T15:27:21","slug":"new-laureate-wrestles-with-mixed-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23721","title":{"rendered":"New Laureate Wrestles with Mixed Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Laureate Wrestles with Mixed Race<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Better Living through Beowulf: How great literature can change your life<\/a>
\n2012-06-11<\/p>\n

Robin Bates<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English
\nSt. Mary’s College of Maryland<\/em><\/p>\n

Monday<\/strong>
\n\u00a0
\nI see that Natasha Trethewey<\/a>, who teaches creative writing at my graduate alma mater (Emory University), is America\u2019s new poet laureate<\/a>. Trethewey is mixed race (white father, black mother) and was born in Mississippi<\/a> in 1966, a time when Jim Crow<\/a> segregation laws were still in effect. By marrying (they went out of state to do so), her parents broke Mississippi\u2019s miscegenation<\/a> laws.
\n\u00a0
\nIn an interview several years ago with Fresh Air<\/a><\/em> moderator Terry Gross<\/a>, Trethewey talked about how people would see her as white when she was with her father and black when she was with her mother. She considered herself black (her mother raised her after her parents divorced), but the following poem shows how children are keenly aware of race distinctions and pick up on the symbolism of color.<\/strong> Trethewey sounds like others with mixed race identities (including Barack Obama<\/a>), \u201cfloundering\u201d in a confusing world where one can flit between sun spots and shadows, flip between black and white…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Laureate Wrestles with Mixed Race Better Living through Beowulf: How great literature can change your life 2012-06-11 Robin Bates, Professor of English St. Mary’s College of Maryland Monday \u00a0 I see that Natasha Trethewey, who teaches creative writing at my graduate alma mater (Emory University), is America\u2019s new poet laureate. Trethewey is mixed race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,20,25],"tags":[11054,11053,1133,11055],"class_list":["post-23721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-better-living-through-beowulf","tag-better-living-through-beowulf-how-great-literature-can-change-your-life","tag-natasha-trethewey","tag-robin-bates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}