{"id":48599,"date":"2016-08-09T15:27:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T15:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48599"},"modified":"2016-08-25T01:30:47","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T01:30:47","slug":"who-gets-to-be-hapa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48599","title":{"rendered":"Who Gets To Be ‘Hapa’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who Gets To Be ‘Hapa’?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Code Switch: Race and Identity, Remixed<\/a>
\nNational Public Radio<\/a>
\n2016-08-08<\/p>\n

Akemi Johnson<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sunset in Waikiki<\/a>: Tourists sipping mai tais crowded the beachside hotel bar. When the server spotted my friend and me, he seemed to relax. “Ah,” he said, smiling. “Two hapa<\/a> girls.”<\/p>\n

He asked if we were from Hawaii<\/a>. We weren’t. We both have lived in Honolulu<\/a> \u2014 my friend lives there now \u2014 but hail from California<\/a>. It didn’t matter. In that moment, he recognized our mixed racial backgrounds and used “hapa” like a secret handshake, suggesting we were aligned with him: insiders and not tourists.<\/p>\n

Like many multiracial Asian-Americans<\/a>, I identify as hapa, a Hawaiian word for “part” that has spread beyond the islands to describe anyone who’s part Asian or Pacific Islander. When I first learned the term in college, wearing it felt thrilling in a tempered way, like trying on a beautiful gown I couldn’t afford. Hapa seemed like the identity of lucky mixed-race people far away, people who’d grown up in Hawaii as the norm, without “Chink” taunts, mangled name pronunciations, or questions about what they were…<\/p>\n

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

Who Gets To Be ‘Hapa’? Code Switch: Race and Identity, Remixed National Public Radio 2016-08-08 Akemi Johnson Sunset in Waikiki: Tourists sipping mai tais crowded the beachside hotel bar. When the server spotted my friend and me, he seemed to relax. “Ah,” he said, smiling. “Two hapa girls.” He asked if we were from Hawaii. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,8,20],"tags":[5519,14788,2309,2833],"class_list":["post-48599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-akemi-johnson","tag-code-switch","tag-national-public-radio","tag-npr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48599","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=48599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48600,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48599\/revisions\/48600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}