Fireweed #75: The Mixed Race Issue [Culturelicious]
By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet
Being mixed race always has its challenges: isolation, language barriers, not fitting in, not being ‘enough’, and the many forms of racism that come with all that.
Every time I tell people that my mom is Peruvian and my dad is Lebanese I get:
- Exotic!
- Interesting.
- How did that happen?
- You look more…
One time a famous playwright of colour stroked my cheek and whispered “exotic” in my ear after I identified myself to him.
When I break it down even more (Mom: Indigenous/Spanish/Chinese + dad: Arab, moved to South America in his teens) I get the insult that people think is funny and acceptable: “you’re a mutt.” It gets worse when I say my dad isn’t in my life, but I really don’t want to go there right now.
Reading Fireweed #75: “The Mixed Race Issue” was not only fun it was refreshing. Its contributors wrote about a lot of what I have experienced over the years; and they wrote from the heart, holding nothing back, and well.
Published in 2002 and guest edited by Lisa Amin, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and May Lui, all mixed race women, Fireweed # 75 was a follow up to a similar anthology, Miscegenation Blues, published in 1994. Amin writes in the intro, “This one is for the beige babies.” It’s that and more.
“Heinz 57,” by Anne-Marie Estrada, is my life story. Except, I’m not Anne-Marie and she isn’t writing about me, she’s writing about herself. A very short piece, “Heinz 57″ speaks to many of us mixies. Broken down into two sections, “HERE.” and “THERE.”, twelve questions Anne-Marie constantly gets are displayed throughout, many of which a lot of mixed race people get:
- Where’s your accent from?
- Are you…?
- Did you go to school in…?
- What do you speak at home?
- What do you eat at home?
- What do you know about your family?
- How did she come to marry a man from…?
Marie writes:
When someone sees my name they think one thing.
When they hear my voice they think another.
Then they see my face and are mildly confused.
Marie ends her short, fast paced, punchy piece with: “Because you just can’t tell by looking.” True!
Jesse Heart has two pieces in Fireweed #75: “Pinky Rant” and “Really/Not Really.” “Pinky Rant,” a non-fiction piece – short essay really, possibly an Op-Ed, goes deep in a small space. Heart explores race and gender and colonialism better than most academics in a concise, cutting manner. Heart starts off with a solid slap to the ear:
I think I am reaching a point of exhaustion. I am tired of explaining…explaining my orientation…my identity as trans, as butch, as boi, as dyke. Explaining my “origin”…?
The explaining is tiring but not as bad as what Heart so beautifully calls “Colour f-cking adjectives.” Heart is referring to comments like “drunken native” when people find out about their Indigenous ancestry. And then there’s the ogling on public transit:
And if it’s not my “origin”, it’s the public debate I must witness, like on a fucking subway, “is that a man/dude/guy…or woman?…**giggle, giggle**.
Heart shines again in their simple yet poignant statements in “Really/not really:”
In her untitled essay, Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz (a half Arab and half Jewish woman) explores hypogamy, racism, the intersection of Zionism and racism, and the ever present racism in feminist/activist circles. It’s deep, hard, honest, and sad.
As a half Arab who doesn’t fit in with the Arab community I love Weiner-Mahfuz’s essay. And I can see why it’s untitled; some things can’t be named or labeled such as many experiences in mixed race life.
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