{"id":52340,"date":"2017-03-11T20:52:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T20:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=52340"},"modified":"2017-03-11T23:33:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T23:33:56","slug":"in-los-angeles-a-festival-of-love-and-hapa-ness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=52340","title":{"rendered":"In Los Angeles, a Festival of Love and Hapa-ness"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Los Angeles, a Festival of Love and Hapa-ness<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2017-03-11<\/p>\n

Lawrence Downes<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nPortraits from H\u0101fu2H\u0101fu, an ongoing photographic project which investigates what it means to be half Japanese and how this defines identity.
\nCredit Tetsuro Miyazaki<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Los Angeles<\/a> \u2014 The current political moment, with its upwelling of nationalism and xenophobia, has a repellent taste, like a mouthful of citrus pith, all bitter and white.<\/p>\n

How bracing, then, to escape in late February to Los Angeles, city of the future, for something called the Hapa Japan Festival<\/a>, a \u201ccelebration of mixed-race and mixed-roots Japanese people and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHapa<\/a>\u201d means \u201chalf\u201d in Hawaiian pidgin English<\/a>, and can be used to denote a variety of mixed-race or ethnic combinations, but in this context it meant half Japanese and half something else. In Hawaii<\/a>, where I grew up Okinawan-Irish, hapa status is unremarkable, a matter-of-fact part of life, like daily sunshine. In the mainland United States, the word is used more assertively, if not defiantly \u2014 as a declaration of an identity that many people overlook or dismiss.<\/p>\n

The story of growing up hapa \u2014 or \u201chafu,\u201d in Japan<\/a> \u2014 has been told and retold, often as melodrama or tragedy, in tales of abandoned Amerasian<\/a> orphans in former war zones, or of more contemporary misfits struggling with confusion and rejection…<\/p>\n

But as Duncan Ryuken Williams<\/a>, a professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California, who organized the festival, explained, it\u2019s more complicated than that, a subject worthy of deep \u2014 and optimistic \u2014 exploration. The festival coincided with a conference at the University of Southern California on critical mixed-race studies, and the publication of \u201cHapa Japan<\/a>,\u201d a two-part volume of essays that Professor Williams edited…<\/p>\n

…But even so, as Mitzi Uehara Carter<\/a>, who teaches at Florida International University and is the daughter of an Okinawan mother and an African-American father, explained, h\u0101fus in Okinawa<\/a>, like those anywhere, often balk at having their lives stuffed into narrative boxes. They don\u2019t like being saddled with identity crises they don\u2019t necessarily have.<\/p>\n

A recent essay<\/a> in The Times described the creativity and mental flexibility of biracial people; critics took issue with it, arguing that race-blending is not the antidote to white supremacy, that hapas won\u2019t save the world…<\/p>\n

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

Los Angeles \u2014 The current political moment, with its upwelling of nationalism and xenophobia, has a repellent taste, like a mouthful of citrus pith, all bitter and white.<\/p>\n

How bracing, then, to escape in late February to Los Angeles, city of the future, for something called the Hapa Japan Festival, a \u201ccelebration of mixed-race and mixed-roots Japanese people and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,459,125,8,20],"tags":[5608,5607,5609,25919,5682,26419,9431,2640,26418,2327,26420],"class_list":["post-52340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-history","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-duncan-r-williams","tag-duncan-ryuken-williams","tag-duncan-williams","tag-hapa-japan-festival","tag-jeff-chiba-stearns","tag-kat-mcdowell","tag-lawrence-downes","tag-new-york-times","tag-tetsuro-miyazaki","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-yano-brothers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52340","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=52340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52349,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52340\/revisions\/52349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}