{"id":46071,"date":"2016-03-16T19:47:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T19:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46071"},"modified":"2017-04-11T00:44:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T00:44:03","slug":"interview-raquel-cepeda-on-identity-race-hip-hop%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46071","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Raquel Cepeda On Identity, Race & Hip-Hop\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview: Raquel Cepeda On Identity, Race & Hip-Hop<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Vibe<\/a>
\n2016-03-16<\/p>\n

Richy Rosario<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nCREDIT: Heather Weston<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

Raquel Cepeda<\/a> is a fighter. The renowned writer, journalist and filmmaker is clad in light blue patterned tights and a gray crop top, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail\u2014 she is furiously jabbing a black Everlast bag<\/a>. On this chilly Friday afternoon, we\u2019re at Mendez Boxing<\/a> where Cepeda spends a good amount of time training for her bouts.<\/p>\n

Inside, the large space on the lower level is laden with black punching bags, swaying from the ceiling. Behind the cloud of sand-filled sacks, sits a red boxing ring. As Cepeda makes her way around the gym, she gets pounds and greetings from many boxing aficionados here. You can very much tell she is a regular and perhaps well-liked. Not to mention, she\u2019s quite comfortable kicking it with the boys. After we take a stroll around the facility, we settle in a wooden bench by a row of yellow lockers.<\/p>\n

Born to Dominican parents in Harlem<\/a>, and raised in Washington Heights<\/a> during the early \u201980s when hip-hop was in a state of becoming, Cepeda is no stranger to battling adversity. From surviving a crime-ridden neighborhood to standing resilient in an abusive household, she details in her 2013 memoir Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina<\/a><\/em> her simultaneous journey of finding her roots through ancestral DNA…<\/p>\n

…How do you define the term AfroLatina?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t define the term AfroLatina, because I don\u2019t like defining terms of identity, because they mean something different to everybody.<\/p>\n

Would you consider yourself one?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Dominiyorkian of mixed decent. If you read my book you will find that I\u2019m mixed and that I am just one example of the many of how the new world came to be. I\u2019m the genetic evidence that the new world happened. So can\u2019t just turn my back on one side of my culture and just call myself one thing. I feel like I\u2019d be selling out the parts of who I am for better or for worse. Because there are things that we have in our blood that we don\u2019t want to have; that we don\u2019t want to admit. That we don\u2019t want to reconcile with. For example, growing up I always thought as the European man as the aggressor, but when you have European blood running down your veins too, you have to come to terms with that…<\/p>\n

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

Raquel Cepeda is a fighter. The renowned writer, journalist and filmmaker is clad in light blue patterned tights and a gray crop top, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail\u2014 she is furiously jabbing a black Everlast bag. On this chilly Friday afternoon, we\u2019re at Mendez Boxing where Cepeda spends a good amount of time training for her bouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13743,14646,8,20,25],"tags":[21745,23244,19795,19796],"class_list":["post-46071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interviews","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-raquel-cepeda","tag-richy-rosario","tag-vibe","tag-vibe-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46071","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=46071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53405,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46071\/revisions\/53405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}