Providing a Voice Interview by Anthony Yuen With her new book, What Are You? Voices of Mixed Race Young People, author Pearl Fuyo Gaskins documents the experiences of eighty mixed race youth and young adults through interviews, poems, essays, and expert insight. An exploration of family relationships, prejudice, dating, personal identity, and other issues, What Are You? has already received positive reviews from the New York Times, Booklist, and School Library Journal [look for a review of What Are You? in the next issue of WH ]. WH recently had the opportunity to interview Gaskins via email from her home in the New York City area. How difficult was it to locate the young people you featured in What Are You? It took a lot of time to locate this mix of people. I cast a wide net in finding interview subjects. I contacted interracial family organizations through AMEA (Association of MultiEthnic Americans). I networked through friends and acquaintances. I surfed the net and posted messages online with Interracial Voice and the Hapa Web site and in the What's Hapa'ning newsletter. (The Hapa Web site and newsletter were especially helpful.) I contacted mixed-race student groups on college campuses. Over a period of two and a half years, I interviewed 80 people and received inquiries from 100 more. I wanted the book to demonstrate the many ways of being racially mixed and illustrate the impact of environment on a person's experiences. So I went to great lengths to select interviewees who portrayed a variety of experiences and backgrounds. I also thought it was important to make the point that communities of mixed-race people have existed for hundreds of years in the US. I looked for individuals from places like Louisiana (Creoles of Color), Hawaii, and Oklahoma (The Black Seminole Nation). They were a bit difficult to find. Yes, some of the people I interviewed were more difficult to locate than others. For example, mixed-race people of Native American and Hispanic or Latino heritages were hard to find. I talked to another researcher who had the same problem. I did come across essays and studies by people of Latino and Indian heritage who identified as racially mixed. But few contacted me to be interviewed. Perhaps I just didn't know where to look or the language to use to get their attention. I tracked some of them down by contacting Native American, Chicano, and Latin American studies programs and posting flyers on their bulletin boards. How was growing up different for you compared with what some of the young people in your book experienced? Are there any similarities in your experiences? There are a lot of similarities; that's why I saw the need for this book. As before, racially mixed people today have to cope with the prejudice and ignorance of others. They are often pressured to "check one box" or deny who they are in order to fit in. They're still the exotic other. Being racially mixed, you are forced to figure out your place in the world in a way that other people are not. But the journey can enrich your life. It made me more self-reflective and more knowledgeable about myself and others. It taught me to look at our society with a more critical eye and to question ideas that most Americans take for granted. I watched some of the people I interviewed wrestle with the same issues I struggled with. I followed several of them over time as they explored their racial identity and searched for acceptance and self-knowledge in different groups. Despite some painful or difficult experiences, they, too, felt that their lives were enriched. Like me, many of them had made the leap from "there's something wrong with me" to "there's something wrong with society." For example, at 14, Chela Delgado of Oakland, California, told me: "Being biracial isn't hard because we're confused about our racial identity. It's hard because everyone else is confused. The problem isn't us-it's everyone else." It's important for racially mixed young people to make this leap and many of the people I talked to had done it. As for the differences between my experiences and theirs, there are several major ones. First, the number of multiracial people has more than quadrupled since I was a teenager and young adult. When I was growing up in Vallejo, California, in the 1970s, I met few other racially mixed people. Mixed-race celebrities and luminaries were rare. IPRIDE, which I was involved with in the early 1980s, was one of the few organizations for interracial families and their kids. Some of the young people I interviewed echoed the same sense of isolation and aloneness that I felt growing up racially mixed. But many did not. They grew up with multiracial friends, classmates, cousins, etc. They had mixed-race role models. Many of them participated in Hapa Issues Forum or one of the dozens of mixed-race student groups or interracial family organizations that have sprung up all over the country. They chat with other mixed-race people in Cyberspace. They have their own publications--Interracial Voice, What's Hapa'ning and MAVIN--and the brilliant work of Dr. Maria Root and other researchers. As a result, I think there's a stronger group and political consciousness among mixed-race young people today. Those who choose to publicly identify as multiracial, hapa, biracial, etc., have more support today than they would have had 20 years ago. Another generational difference is that--although we still have a long way to go--the taboo against interracial marriage and relationships has weakened since my youth. Americans, including Japanese-Americans, have become more accepting. I remember going to San Francisco's Japantown with my mom, who is Issei. Sometimes Japanese-Americans were rude--they either stared or they completely ignored us. I don't feel any discomfort and scrutiny there now. I think there is an increasing awareness in our society (in part due to efforts of groups like HIF, AMEA, Project RACE) that racially mixed people exist. When I was growing up we were invisible. I am sure that you were probably familiar with what many of your interviewees related in your book, like getting the "What Are You?" question, having to face questions of racial or ethnic loyalty, being exoticized or othered, etc. Did any interviews reveal something that you had never come across before? What surprised me most were some of the trends I observed. For example, the majority of the 80 mixed-race people I interviewed said they didn't discuss race or being racially mixed in their families. A few people admitted that they didn't share painful experiences with their parents because they didn't want to upset them. Some people said they sensed that their parents were uncomfortable talking about race or that their parents were dismissive or did not understand their struggles as mixed-race people. The families that were most open about discussing issues of race and identity were those that were members of an interracial family organization or AMEA affiliate. I don't think lack of communication is a characteristic of interracial families. I think it's a characteristic of American families or perhaps families with teenagers. I hope What Are You? will facilitate better communication and understanding between multiracial people and their parents. Many mixed race people point to college as a major, if not the, site in embarking on an exploration of their mixed heritage. Did you sense this phenomenon in the young people you profiled, especially those that may have entered college during the writing of What Are You? Yes, definitely. Many people told me that their late teens and early 20s was the time when they truly embraced their mixed-race heritage and began to explore it in a conscious way. I think there's a lot of exploring that goes on throughout adolescence, but perhaps a lot of it is not so conscious for many people. The teenage years, especially the middle school years, are characterized by brutal peer pressure. The predominant concern of most teenagers, especially younger teens, is to fit in and be accepted. I think it would be extraordinarily difficult for a teenager to assert his or her mixed-race heritage, or to even think about it, if peers didn't support that. As teens grow older and surer of who they are, there is less pressure to conform and more freedom to be an individual. College is a laboratory for self-exploration. There are lots of opportunities for self-discovery, including opportunities to explore racial and ethnic identity. The people I talked to were taking ethnic studies and social science classes, writing poetry and research papers about mixed-race issues, going abroad to study, learning foreign languages, living in integrated dorms, participating in student politics, dating, etc. This is not unique to racially mixed college students. I think others, particularly African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and other people of color, have similar experiences. At large diverse campuses, students also have the chance to interact with people of racial and ethnic groups they previously had no contact with--this can lead to both positive and negative experiences that shape their racial identity. For example, in an essay that was published by Hapa and in my book, Rocky Mitarai talks about leaving his home in Sonoma, which is predominantly white, to go to college at UCSF, which has a large Asian-American population. In college, some multiracial people have their first contact with others who are also racially mixed. They have the opportunity to participate in mixed-race student groups and compare their experiences and have the mixed-race part of themselves validated and understood, perhaps for the first time. College is not the only place where these things can occur. When people are 18, 19, 20, and older, they are also joining the military and taking jobs out of high school. Young people are very mobile. Dr. Maria Root says that just moving from one community to another can force racially mixed people to renegotiate their racial identity as the way that people view or categorize them changes. At the end of the introduction of What Are You?, you emphasize that the young people profiled have many more dimensions beyond just being multiracial. As you conducted interviews and crafted your book, did you experience any concern about the possibility of reducing your interviewees to simply mixed race subjects, even though the book is essentially the voices of mixed race young people? Yes. The focus of the book was race and the mixed-race experience. But I was concerned that readers--particularly readers who are not racially mixed--would forget that the young people they were reading about were multi-dimensional human beings. I was very conscious of this issue when I was editing many of the selections. Also, I included that note in my introduction to remind readers that in most ways the people profiled in the book are just like other people their age--there's just a part of their experience that's a little different. This was the best solution I could come up with given the constraints on my time and the space available in the book. As mixed-race people, many of our experiences--the what are you questions, the "you're so exotic" comments, the stereotypes of the tragic mulatto and the marginal man/woman--involve other people reducing our entire existence to one thing, our racial and ethnic background. That's really dehumanizing. I was hoping that the book would counter some of that. I think there are times in our lives when the racial part of our identity necessarily becomes paramount. For example, this seems to be true when many people are in their late teens and early 20s, as we discussed in a previous question. For many folks, it seems that the race stuff recedes and other stuff comes to the forefront as time passes. Maya Corey, who is African-American and European-American, talks about this in the book. "For a while I think I was consumed with the racial aspect of my identity..." she says. Then she discusses how she came to realize that she could also define herself by her goals, spiritual ideology, and other things. I thought that was a very astute insight. Given the complexities of relating the mixed race experience to others, I think you handled the subject extremely well, which is evident in the overall excellence of What Are You? To end, can you tell us if there any plans for a follow up or related work/project in the future? Thank you for the compliment about my book. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback. It's been extremely gratifying--sometimes overwhelmingly so. If the book is a success it's because there are many people who contributed their ideas, experiences, and wisdom to it. There were 80 young people who shared their life stories, poems, and essays. And there were brilliant researchers--Maria P. P. Root, G. Reginald Daniel, Cindy Nakashima, George Kich, Teresa Kay Williams, Christine Iijima Hall, and others--whose ideas guided me in my research and writing. I want to thank everyone who is a part of Hapa Issues Forum. From the inception of What Are You? in 1996, HIF has been an invaluable resource. Many of my interview subjects came to me by way of a notice on your Web site and I reprinted several pieces from the What's Hapa'ning newsletter. Creating this book is one of my greatest accomplishments. It's also the most difficult thing I've ever done. The support and encouragement of many people, including people I met through HIF, reinforced my belief that this project was worthwhile and helped me push ahead. There's a lot more to be said or written about the mixed-race experience, but not by me. I don't have plans for a follow up or related project in the future. However, I am planning to work on another book involving young people. The teen and young adult years are such an incredibly dynamic, creative, and exciting time of life. My favorite part of creating What Are You was interviewing young people, meeting them, and watching a few of them grow up. I hope my next project will be as emotionally rewarding as this one has been. Copyright Hapa Issues Forum Inc. 1999 This article was used with permission from What's Hapa'ning, The Hapa Issues Forum Newsletter, Winter 1999/2000 They can be reached at: 1840 Sutter St San Francisco CA 94115-3220 wh@hapaissuesforum.org www.hapaissuesforum.org If you would like to comment on this book, please email us at comments@whatareyou.com If you have a problem or question about this Web site email the webmaster@whatareyou.com