{"id":8143,"date":"2010-08-03T05:22:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T05:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8143"},"modified":"2011-01-20T20:25:24","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T20:25:24","slug":"part-asian-not-hapa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8143","title":{"rendered":"Part Asian, Not Hapa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part Asian, Not Hapa<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Open Salon
\nThoughts from a Third Culture: on being mixed in America<\/a>
\n2010-07-27<\/p>\n

Mia Nakaji Monnier<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother is Japanese from Osaka<\/a>; my father, American from a small town in Western Oregon<\/a>. There’s a word for people like me, used especially on the West Coast and popularized in recent years, maybe most notably by artist Kip Fulbeck<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Hapa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From the Hawaiian phrase \u201chapa haole\u201d (\u201chalf white\u201d), the word \u201chapa\u201d has come to be a label that many multiracial people with some Asian heritage incorporate into their identities, whether they wear it with pride or with ambivalence.<\/p>\n

I don’t wear it at all.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I think \u201chapa\u201d is an offensive word, though my parents took issue with it as my brothers and I were growing up, their reason being that it means, literally, \u201chalf.\u201d \u201cHaafu,\u201d the Japanese equivalent has the same literal meaning and I’ve even heard people skip over both these words entirely, going straight to \u201chalf.\u201d As in, \u201cYou look a little Japanese. Are you half?\u201d or \u201cWhy do you work at the Japanese American National Museum? OH, are you half?!\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Part Asian, Not Hapa Open Salon Thoughts from a Third Culture: on being mixed in America 2010-07-27 Mia Nakaji Monnier My mother is Japanese from Osaka; my father, American from a small town in Western Oregon. There’s a word for people like me, used especially on the West Coast and popularized in recent years, maybe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,6],"tags":[5244,5245,3436,3437],"class_list":["post-8143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-new-media","tag-mia-monnier","tag-mia-n-monnier","tag-mia-nakaji-monnier","tag-open-salon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143","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=8143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}