Writing About Race as a Mixed-Race Writer
Race is an uncomfortable, intersectional, and necessary topic of discussion. Writing about it can be as difficult as talking about it. What can complicate it further? Being mixed.
Photo by Usman Yousaf from Unsplash.
“I know you don’t think that any tongue I speak is mine; it must be rented. I am always denial, or pretense. A child born mid-flight has no nation. I can pull on either culture, but they always melt like a dream, trickle away, water on the oiled pelt of foreign.”
It’s an interesting and dangerous topic of conversation - writing about being mixed. I find myself hesitant even now to write about it because I don’t feel authentically qualified. I’m only a quarter Japanese, after all, the granddaughter of a Japanese war bride and American serviceman during World War II. My last name is Smith. By all means, I look ambiguous, mistaken for being Hispanic or Latina more than anything. With my curly hair and Euro-centric facial features, no one ever guesses I’m Japanese. Only other mixed people get the idea. So, writing about this feels fraudulent - and it complicates the questions further.
How do we write about race as mixed-race writers?
Well, as we do anything, very carefully.
I don’t say that facetiously. I say that with the knowledge that it takes a lot of careful thought. When I was writing my book, I wanted my two main characters to be mixed. And I wanted that not to serve as a focal point of the book. I often find, when reading books with mixed-race characters, that is often a signature talking point, if not the main talking point. I wanted mixed-race characters to be able to exist, as they are, in a world that denies them.
But, again, how do we do that?
Not without its struggles. I’ve read books with mixed characters, usually written by monoracials who share one of the mixed person’s halves. They focus on the obvious and likely things they’ve experienced as well - being exocitized, fetishized, probed and prodded by white folks about their mix, being called a mutt, etc. What I think often gets lost is the lack of belonging.
One thing I remember distinctly from college is a friend of mine, who was from Nepal, in a drunken stupor telling me that I’m not Asian. I can’t be Asian, one, because I wasn’t full, and two, because I wasn’t raised in Asia. I’m not claiming to have been raised in Asia, but I want to be able to claim my roots, to remember where much of my family still lives. I also remember when I worked in a bookstore, a white lady coming up to me asking where I was from, and then calling me a mutt. Saying she wished her kids had my skin color.
There’s a dichotomy that gets lost. The exocitism and the lack of belonging, neither desired, but one put in front of the other, because people are often guilty of gatekeeping race and not willing to admit to it, even while in the act of doing so. People love to write about mixed-race people, and some people go so far as to say that mixed-race babies are the solution to racism.
First of all, no.
Second, no again.
Mixed children aren’t necessarily a product of love, and may directly result from a want to have “tan” children with eurocentric facial features. This harms the child, as well as dark-skinned folks who are often shamed for their skin color, deemed undesirable, and are more often victims of racism than light-skinned folks.
As I said, this is a complicated issue. And it’s hard to put into writing (in more ways than one).
I don’t know, friends. There was a period in my childhood when, whenever I wrote a character, I would describe their eyes as “almond-shaped.” Because that’s how other people described my eyes, even my parents. Not cool, young Melissa. Not cool.
But there are mistakes to be made! And it’s okay to make mistakes, so long as we’re willing to rectify and learn from them. There was a woman I used to chat with, who said other people said she looked Asian, then said she didn’t look Asian because her eyes weren’t “squinty.”
A shocking moment for me, and I asked her not to refer to Asian eyes like that, as they’re already either demonized or fetishized in the media, and they’re just eyes, after all. She went off on me after that and said I can’t talk about Asian eyes either, even though I actually am Asian. So there’s the gatekeeping, again, by both sides of the coin, as well as an unwillingness to learn.
I could keep going, honestly. There’s so much to cover I could probably write a book on this. But for the sake of time, let’s say this: writing about race is hard. It’s uncomfortable. And for these reasons, we must do it. We must try and understand the stigma and fetishization of mixed people and try to find a solid middle ground -- something I believe looks a bit like acceptance, in both or several communities.
Anway. Today’s the last day of January, and I’ve written….31 poems! On track so far, but we’ve still got 11 months left!
Here’s a poem I wrote about being mixed. Enjoy! And remember to subscribe, shoot me an email, or leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear your reactions.
Foreign
There’s a corner in my house where my dad sits to
pray at the feet of his mother, born in a place I’ve never
seen, oceans away from the floor of my feet, and my
father holds his head in his hands, pinprick hair oiled
black earth soiled at the root of his existence. My dad
kicked the shit out of anyone who called him a “Jap,” and
he looked at me, decades later, in a basement across state
lines, and told me no one would ever look at me and think
I’m white.
He was wrong, and he was right, and I walk with Italian
curls and Japanese skin, with one eye bigger than the other,
with a boy who told me he was just as mixed as me because
he was Polish and British, and I don’t know how to feel
about that.
There’s a man on the street now, who stops me and speaks
in flowing tongues, and I stumble out that I don’t know
Spanish, but he smiles and continues on, and that is one of
the ways I exist, in a body that doesn’t know borders, born
somewhere in the Pacific, caught mid-flight. Here still, old
roommates say I’m just a tan white girl or a conversation
piece for the merits of diversity, but I think of my father,
salted earth sacred in his hands knelt at the altar of a woman
I never knew, and there isn’t an answer for this either.
