{"id":39940,"date":"2015-02-11T23:34:57","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T23:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39940"},"modified":"2015-09-02T01:07:26","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T01:07:26","slug":"part-asian-american-all-jewish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39940","title":{"rendered":"Part Asian-American, All Jewish?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part Asian-American, All Jewish?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity<\/a>
\nNational Public Radio<\/a>
\n2015-02-10<\/p>\n

Rachel Gross<\/strong><\/a>, Editor
\nMoment Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

I was five years old when my mother threatened to give me away to journalist Connie Chung<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chung and her husband, Maury Povich<\/a>, had just announced their intention to adopt a half-Chinese, half-Jewish child<\/a>. At this, my mother, watching on TV in our living room, did a double take. She looked at the screen. Then she looked at me, her half-Chinese, half-Jewish, fully-misbehaving daughter. “How would you like to go live with that woman?” she said.<\/p>\n

It was then that I had a startling realization: I was special. Not special in the way that everyone’s kids are special \u2014 I mean really special. I, with my chubby Chinese cheeks and frizzy Jewish hair, was a unique snowflake, shaped like the Star of David, dusted with matcha green tea powder.<\/p>\n

“I’m special!” I announced. “Famous people want to adopt me!”<\/p>\n

Mom rolled her eyes as if to say, oy vey<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Only later would I learn the truth: Not everyone was as thrilled about my heritage as I was. The problem was mainly on the Jewish side. As I grew up, announcing I was Jewish often felt “like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials,” in Joan Didion’s<\/a> words. “But you don’t look Jewish!” came the incredulous reply. Some even implied that the union that produced me was nothing less than a threat to the Jewish people \u2014 that I was what was wrong with Judaism today…<\/p>\n

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

Part Asian-American, All Jewish? Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity National Public Radio 2015-02-10 Rachel Gross, Editor Moment Magazine I was five years old when my mother threatened to give me away to journalist Connie Chung. Chung and her husband, Maury Povich, had just announced their intention to adopt a half-Chinese, half-Jewish child. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,3601,8,820,20],"tags":[14788,2309,2833,20891,19326],"class_list":["post-39940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-code-switch","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr","tag-racel-e-gross","tag-rachel-gross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39940","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=39940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42516,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39940\/revisions\/42516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}