{"id":34493,"date":"2013-10-27T03:08:30","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T03:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34493"},"modified":"2021-11-03T22:55:40","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T22:55:40","slug":"the-five-stages-of-being-biracial-if-youre-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34493","title":{"rendered":"The Five Stages of Being Biracial (If You\u2019re Me)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Five Stages of Being Biracial (If You\u2019re Me)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Toast<\/a>
\n2013-10-21<\/p>\n

Jaya Saxena<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

1. Denial<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that the idea of being biracial frustrated me, it was just that I didn\u2019t think I was it.<\/p>\n

Yes, I finally learned to write \u201cJaya Saxena,\u201d but to a blank-slate of a five-year-old that combination of letters was just as random as any of my friends\u2019 names. \u201cJudith\u201d looked weird too, right? \u201cDenisa\u201d? \u201cFiona\u201d? I figured it was all arbitrary.<\/p>\n

My family did not act like other immigrant or biracial families. Those kids had parents who spoke of siblings and childhoods in foreign countries with thick accents. They always seemed to be returning to those countries, or filling their households with decorations and music to make it feel like they had never left. They had kids who actually knew something about a \u201chome country.\u201d My house never felt like Talia\u2019s house, where she\u2019d switch between speaking to her dad in Hebrew, her mom in English, and then playing Aladdin on Sega Genesis with me.<\/p>\n

My dad, who moved to Newark when he was 8, had long ago adopted a Jersey accent and demeanor, his actions indistinguishable from those of his Italian and Jewish neighbors. He cooked pork chops and pasta with meat sauce, and played country fiddle. He lit incense sometimes but so did lots of hippie parents. He hadn\u2019t been back to India since before I was born.<\/p>\n

My mom, with her freckles and red hair, was often mistaken for my Irish nanny. We can trace our first ancestor\u2019s arrival to 1635, and by about 1740 everyone on her side had officially come over. She grew up on a farm and wasn\u2019t afraid of killing the roaches that sometimes skittered around our apartment, and the only time she was called \u201cexotic\u201d was when she went to Scotland. Together, they were just my parents.<\/p>\n

So I wasn\u2019t biracial. I was a New Yorker, as if being both weren\u2019t an option. I ate bagels and played handball and wore pants. My dad taught me how to play guitar and played me songs by Danny Kaye or The Muppets. Yes, sometimes my \u201cdress up\u201d outfits contained brightly colored silk and bangles, but those were just decorations. Yes, my grandma would make potatoes that came out yellow and were flecked with seeds, but she\u2019d save a plate of spaghetti and slices of American cheese for me. They<\/em> were Indian, not me, and that was normal…<\/p>\n

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

The Five Stages of Being Biracial (If You\u2019re Me) The Toast 2013-10-21 Jaya Saxena 1. Denial It wasn\u2019t that the idea of being biracial frustrated me, it was just that I didn\u2019t think I was it. Yes, I finally learned to write \u201cJaya Saxena,\u201d but to a blank-slate of a five-year-old that combination of letters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,20],"tags":[18157,16250],"class_list":["post-34493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-jaya-saxena","tag-the-toast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34493","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=34493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62092,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34493\/revisions\/62092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}