{"id":27820,"date":"2013-01-25T02:54:15","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T02:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=27820"},"modified":"2013-01-25T02:54:15","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T02:54:15","slug":"betwixt-and-between-embracing-the-borderlands-of-my-mixed-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=27820","title":{"rendered":"Betwixt and Between: Embracing the Borderlands of My Mixed Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovernikkei.org\/en\/journal\/2013\/1\/23\/betwixt-and-between\/\" target=\"_blank\">Betwixt and Between: Embracing the Borderlands of My Mixed Heritage<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovernikkei.org\" target=\"_blank\">Discover Nikkei<\/a><br \/>\n2013-01-23<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovernikkei.org\/en\/journal\/authors\/lesperance-mari\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mari L&#8217;Esperance<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For weeks I resisted beginning work on this essay. Then, synchronistically, I encountered two pieces at <em>Discover Nikkei<\/em> that helped me get started. The first was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovernikkei.org\/en\/journal\/authors\/matsumoto-nancy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nancy Matsumoto\u2019s<\/a> excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovernikkei.org\/en\/journal\/2012\/12\/26\/exploring-the-borderlands\/\" target=\"_blank\">review (December 26, 2012)<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Japanese_diaspora\" target=\"_blank\">Nikkei<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=329\" target=\"_blank\">Hapa <\/a>psychologist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyshigematsu.com\/about\" target=\"_blank\">Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu\u2019s<\/a> latest book <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=24227\" target=\"_blank\">When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities<\/a><\/em>, and the second was a first-person essay (January 3, 2013) by Los Angeles-based food writer, soba maker\/purveyor, and Common Grains founder Sonoko Sakai.<\/p>\n<p>In her review, Matsumoto writes that Murphy-Shigematsu\u2019s lifework explores \u201cthe complex issue of identity among mixed-race Asians\u2026 With subtleness and great empathy he guides us through what he calls \u2018the borderlands\u2019 where transnational and multiethnic identities are formed\u201d. Eureka! The symbolism and psychology of \u201cborderlands\u201d\u2014both internal and external\u2014have been my own preoccupation for years, as a poet, writer, and woman of mixed Japanese ancestry.<\/p>\n<p>I was similarly inspired by, and felt a kinship with, Sakai through her account of her experience as a woman born in New York to Japanese parents and raised in several different places in the West and Japan, including my mother\u2019s hometown of Kamakura. Eventually Sakai settled in Los Angeles, where she leads workshops and writes about food as a source of constancy, connection, and physical and spiritual sustenance. Reading these two pieces helped me to integrate the threads of my own history and my struggle over the years to define my identity in the world&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;I am the daughter of a Japanese mother and a New Englander father of French Canadian and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Abenaki_people\" target=\"_blank\">Abenaki<\/a> Missisquoi Indian ancestry. Months after I was born in Kobe in the 1960s, my father moved us to Southern California and then on to Santa Barbara, Guam, and Tokyo. This regular uprooting, combined with my bicultural upbringing, contributed to my feelings of otherness&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.discovernikkei.org\/en\/journal\/2013\/1\/23\/betwixt-and-between\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Betwixt and Between: Embracing the Borderlands of My Mixed Heritage Discover Nikkei 2013-01-23 Mari L&#8217;Esperance For weeks I resisted beginning work on this essay. Then, synchronistically, I encountered two pieces at Discover Nikkei that helped me get started. The first was Nancy Matsumoto\u2019s excellent review (December 26, 2012) of Nikkei\/Hapa psychologist Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu\u2019s latest book [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,125,8,20],"tags":[1922,13469,13190,13470,512],"class_list":["post-27820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-discover-nikkei","tag-mari-lesperance","tag-nancy-matsumoto","tag-sonoko-sakai","tag-stephen-murphy-shigematsu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27820","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=27820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}