{"id":58443,"date":"2019-07-10T18:15:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T18:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58443"},"modified":"2019-07-10T18:36:38","modified_gmt":"2019-07-10T18:36:38","slug":"historian-master-storyteller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58443","title":{"rendered":"Historian, master storyteller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historian, master storyteller<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

PUNCH Magazine<\/a>
\nMarch 2019
\npages 30-34<\/p>\n

Sheri Baer<\/strong><\/a>, Editorial Director
\nIrene Searles<\/strong><\/a>, photography<\/p>\n

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

Allyson Hobbs<\/a> distinctly remembers the first time she saw Stanford University. After flying out from Chicago<\/a> for a final interview in January 2008, she was chatting with a faculty member as they arrived on campus. \u201cWe were talking about Ohio State football and we turned down Palm Drive<\/a>,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAll of a sudden, my breath was taken away. I couldn\u2019t believe the beauty of it. I thought to myself, \u2018Wow! I desperately want to teach here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Allyson secured the position and made the move. Now an associate professor of American History, she is also director of Stanford\u2019s African and African American Studies<\/a> program (AAAS), which is marking its 50th anniversary this year. Founded in 1969, AAAS was Stanford\u2019s first ethnic studies program and the first of its kind at a private academic institution. \u201cMany programs are having their 50th anniversary around this time,\u201d Allyson notes, adding that it\u2019s no coincidence. \u201cThese programs were created in response to student protests in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally from Morristown, New Jersey<\/a>, Allyson says that she was raised in a very supportive community. \u201cMy parents really shielded me and gave me an idyllic childhood,\u201d she says. \u201cThey always talked about how lucky we were to live in that kind of environment.\u201d Allyson attended Harvard in the mid-’90s, where she was exposed to a broader perspective. \u201cThere was a robust conversation about race at that time in college, and I think that really ignited my interest.<\/p>\n

Allyson especially appreciated the rich storytelling of her aunt, who served as the family historian. When Allyson came home fascinated by a story about racial passing<\/a>, her aunt recounted the experiences of a distant cousin who had grown up on Chicago\u2019s South Side<\/a> in the ’30s and ’40s. According to her aunt, this cousin was very light-skinned and when she graduated from high school, her mother encouraged her to move to Los Angeles<\/a> and pass as a white woman. \u201cHer mother was insistent and believed that passing as white would give her daughter a better life,\u201d Allyson was told.<\/p>\n

That story inspired Allyson to write her first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing<\/em><\/a> in American Life, tracing the practice back to the late 18th century. \u201cPeople who passed were able to access better jobs and live in better neighborhoods, but I wanted to uncover what it really meant to the people who walked away, what they had to give up,\u201d Allyson says. \u201cWriting the history of passing is really writing the history of loss.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Allyson Hobbs distinctly remembers the first time she saw Stanford University. After flying out from Chicago for a final interview in January 2008, she was chatting with a faculty member as they arrived on campus. \u201cWe were talking about Ohio State foot-ball and we turned down Palm Drive,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAll of a sudden, my breath was taken away. I couldn\u2019t believe the beauty of it. I thought to myself, \u2018Wow! I desperately want to teach here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,8,6462,20],"tags":[9812,29980,29979,29978,29977,3233],"class_list":["post-58443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-allyson-hobbs","tag-punch-magazine","tag-sheri-baer","tag-sheri-g-baerer","tag-sheri-gevurtz-baer","tag-stanford-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58443","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=58443"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58452,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58443\/revisions\/58452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}