{"id":58568,"date":"2019-07-25T01:01:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T01:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58568"},"modified":"2019-07-25T01:01:47","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T01:01:47","slug":"trying-to-recognize-people-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58568","title":{"rendered":"Trying To Recognize People Like Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trying To Recognize People Like Me<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Margins<\/a>
\nAsian American Writers\u2019 Workshop<\/a>
\n2017-06-16<\/p>\n

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\n(from left to right) T Kira Madden<\/a>, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan<\/a> and Violet Kupersmith<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Writers Rowan Hisayo Buchanan<\/a>, Violet Kupersmith<\/a>, and T Kira Madden<\/a> speak to each other about mixed-race identities in life and literature<\/em><\/p>\n

February 28 isn\u2019t too cold. I hurry through sharp sunlight to a caf\u00e9 in Lincoln Center<\/a>. It is the official launch day of my novel, <\/em>Harmless Like You<\/a>, in the USA. I feel woozy and anxious. I\u2019ve been avoiding bookshops, because I\u2019m too scared to know if it\u2019s in stock. I\u2019m meeting two dear friends who are also writers. T Kira Madden<\/a> is the Editor in Chief of <\/em>No Tokens Journal, with her memoir forthcoming. Violet Kupersmith\u2019s collection of stories <\/em>The Frangipani Hotel<\/a> was published by Speigel & Grau, and her novel is forthcoming. They are both dear friends of mine, and it has been too long since I\u2019ve seen their faces. The other thing we have in common is that we are mixed-race. Specifically, we have one Asian parent and one white parent. I\u2019ve been told that equals accessible exotic. I want to ask Violet and Kira how they deal with this and how it affects them as writers.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan<\/strong><\/a>: I never know what to call myself. At readings, people laugh at me when I get introduced as British-Japanese-Chinese-American, like it\u2019s a punchline. I think, hey it\u2019s not a joke. But I laugh too because I\u2019m nervous. In Japan, I called myself hafu which is the accepted word there. I know lots of Americans say hapa\u2014but I\u2019m nervous about my right to take something from Hawaiian Islander culture. I grew up saying halfie, which I worry is too cute\u2014but it is at least mine. So these days, I go back to halfie.<\/p>\n

Violet Kupersmith<\/strong><\/a>: I\u2019m half-Vietnamese and half-white. My mother\u2019s family came to America on a boat in the seventies. My father\u2019s side is all mixed European potato genes. I remember being really excited when the term \u201chapa\u201d first started getting circulated, because it was finally a real label I could apply to myself after growing up having to just check the \u201cother\u201d box on all my paperwork. But I still feel a little squirmy referring to myself as hapa out loud because, like you said, it\u2019s from Hawaiian Islander culture.<\/p>\n

T Kira Madden<\/strong>: I am Hawaiian so I\u2019m used to \u201chapa! hapa haole!\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Writers Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Violet Kupersmith, and T Kira Madden speak to each other about mixed-race identities in life and literature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[16449,29745,29722,30041],"class_list":["post-58568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-asian-american-writers-workshop","tag-rowan-hisayo-buchanan","tag-t-kira-madden","tag-violet-kupersmith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58568","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=58568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58571,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58568\/revisions\/58571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}