{"id":58157,"date":"2019-05-24T20:15:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58157"},"modified":"2019-05-25T17:48:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-25T17:48:59","slug":"the-seeker-of-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58157","title":{"rendered":"The Seeker of Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Seeker of Stories<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Christina Torres: Teacher. Runner. Writer.<\/a>
\n2019-05-23<\/p>\n

Christina Torres<\/strong><\/a>, Teacher
\nPunahou School, Honolulu, Hawai\u2018i<\/em><\/p>\n

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

\u201cSo\u2026 what are you? Like, where are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many mixed-race and\/or \u201cethnically ambiguous\u201d people, I\u2019ve spent quite a bit of time explaining myself. I grew up in a mostly white suburb in Southern California<\/a>, I\u2019ve spent a lot of my time (and writing) trying to explain who I am (my dad is Chicano<\/a> and my mom is Filipina<\/a>. My brother and I call it \u201cMexipino\/a<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Being mixed-race in the U.S.<\/a> was and is confusing at times. In a society desperately trying to slip an easily-read label, we struggle to fit that narrative. We get told we\u2019re \u201cnot-_______ enough,\u201d or not really _______ , as if our mixed status means there\u2019s a quantifiable amount of culture we\u2019ll never be able to maintain.<\/p>\n

And, like it did for a lot of mixed race folks, those words hurt. A lot. They made me question myself and my identity, they made me feel less than to my community in a world that already looked at Brown people as less than. Yes, my parents helped me try to navigate these waters and helped me be proud of both cultures, but it was hard when people I thought would get me still made me feel alone. It made me feel as if I had nowhere to go…<\/p>\n

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

I grew up, though, and began finding power in being mixed race, and learning to claim both my AAPI upbringing (most of my friends were Asian-American) with the truth of both cultures. I learned Spanish and danced Tinikling. While I still got the looks and the questions, knowing that I wasn\u2019t alone in my responses and frustrations made it more bearable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,14646,8,20],"tags":[19490,29825,911,10807],"class_list":["post-58157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-christina-torres","tag-christina-torres-teacher-runner-writer","tag-hawaii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58157","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=58157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58159,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58157\/revisions\/58159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}