{"id":63175,"date":"2022-02-21T18:59:56","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T18:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63175"},"modified":"2022-02-21T19:08:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T19:08:01","slug":"mitski-doesnt-bother-with-labels-she-prefers-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63175","title":{"rendered":"Mitski Doesn’t Bother With Labels. She Prefers Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mitski Doesn’t Bother With Labels. She Prefers Excellence<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Westworld<\/a>
\n2017-07-14<\/p>\n

Tom Murphy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nMitski<\/a> Ebru Yildiz<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Mitski Miyawaki<\/a>, who performs with her band under her first name, grew up in a biracial, multicultural household. During her childhood, Mitski lived in Japan<\/a>, Malaysia<\/a>, China<\/a>, Turkey<\/a> and the Democratic Republic of Congo<\/a>. But it wasn’t until she returned to the U.S.<\/a> that she had a racial designation imposed on her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,\u201d says Mitski. \u201cI didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the U.S., Mitski was regularly asked what most biracial people \u2013 her being half Japanese and half Caucasian American \u2013 are asked at least once in their lives: \u201cWhat ARE you?\u201d Mitski doesn’t particularly identify with American or Japanese culture, and her parents didn’t encourage her to choose or adopt either.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way,\u201d observes Mitski. \u201cBeing an outsider at the time nurtured my eye as a writer.\u201d…<\/p>\n