CVK
We got a few emails about this story in Phillipine News Online. Thanks Phil and MBF!! Here are some excerpts:
With the release of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter #6, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” across the world, Asian fans and readers of the book are looking critically at how Asian Americans fit into the Hogwarts […]

JC
Arrive Net announces new web business, Alaafia Kids. It was created by mom and intermarried wife, Jeanne Yacoubou. The site contains many products including dolls, kids clothing, and other educational products and resources. She explains the drive behind her new project:
Founder and President Mrs. Yacoubou, who is white and married to Malik, from Benin, […]

RK
For a culture that (unfortunately) does not exactly embrace inter-caste, nevermind interracial marriages, I was thrilled to see this month’s Little India magazine run a story by Zofeen Maqsood about the growing number of young, successful Indian women who are choosing to marry men of non-Indian descent. Usually it is Indian men who are afforded […]

JC
AsianWeek reports on a new trio of Korean comics who have come together to form “The Kims of Comedy”. They cover the usual inappropriate/raunchy topics, plus transracial adoption and mixed identity — one member (Kevin Shea) is a transracial adoptee, and one (Steve Byrne) is mixed.
Cool and captivating Kevin Shea was born in Seoul, Korea […]

CVK
Karina Lombard has just joined the cast of USA series The 4400. She is best known for her role in season 1 of The L Word, in which she plays Marina, who seduces the previously heterosexual Jenny, setting off a chain of events that changes her life. You might also recognize her as the woman […]

JC
Rachel wrote us several months ago to see if we had any MMW shirts. She said that she was a fan and wanted to support. When we said “not yet…but soon!” she said she would get started in the meantime. Rachel, thanks for your support and for representing! Go grassroots!
Hi MMW team!
I wrote you […]

CVK
Having never read a Harry Potter book in my life, most of this is totally going over my head. For those of you who have read Rowling’s books, I’d love to know what you think of this Tolerance.org article’s take on the “half-blood” terminology and how it relates to racial hierarchy:
In J.K. Rowling’s world, half-blood […]

CVK
Jeff Chang and Sylvia Chan just wrote an AWESOME article for Alternet breaking down why the movie “Crash” left so many people of color unsatisfied. They completely put into words what I thought about the movie but couldn’t quite verbalize. Here are some excerpts:
The entire notion that racism can be instigated by “crashes” and collisions […]

CVK
There was a BIG story on Stacey Ann Chin in the Arts & Leisure section this past weekend. Check it out.
“I was born with an otherness attached to me,” said Ms. Chin, a thin 32-year-old with a fat cloud of dark, kinky hair. She sat on an overstuffed sofa in her Crown Heights apartment on […]

CVK
Nice to see that July’s issue of The Advocate featured an interracial couple on its cover. The cover story “Winning the Adoption Wars” is not specifically about interracial couples or transracial adoption, but rather about the widely varying state laws governing gay rights to adoption, and the ensuing confusion. Which makes it even better that […]

CVK
Has anyone else seen the new American Express print ad? It’s a black and white photo of Tiger Woods embracing his mom. I happened across it in New York magazine a couple weeks ago, and thought it was so sweet, and well-done. I think it makes a really powerful statement about his identity and his […]

CVK & JC
If you haven’t already, please join our mailing list so that you can begin receiving our monthly email newsletter. Around the 15th of each month, Mixed Media Watch will fill you in on the previous month’s opinion pieces, action items, and top 10 news stories that made it onto our radar. This is […]

JC
A couple in London kissed for 31 hours to break the world record for longest kiss. For me, the idea of kissing in the loo removes all romance/love from the act…But hey, who am I to judge? I’m not a world record holder, now am I? Thanks to Ken for the heads up on […]

RK
This week’s episode of HBO hit series Entourage (#14, “Chinatown”) showed one of those seamless and beautiful moments—the ones Carmen has dubbed “yes we’re mixed but why even mention it because it doesn’t matter to the story… we’re normal” moments. I loved this scene so much, simply because of its verisimilitude, rather than shining a […]

JC
The Book Standard reviews Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America, by journalist Scott Poulson-Bryant. The book is to be released this October. This isn’t a glowing review — it sounds like the book doesn’t really offer much research on the subject, but anecdotal evidence instead. Smart title, though.
The title’s […]

CVK
Thanks for making us all feel bad, Helen Oyemi! Not only did she complete her novel The Icarus Girl at the tender young age of 18, but she got rave reviews too! The San Francisco Chronicle reviews Oyemi’s book, which is about a young mixed girl whose mysterious friend Tilly Tilly is invisible to everyone […]

CVK
LOL! Hyphen magazine’s blog has an item on sex blogger Jessica Cutler (that’s not her in the pic, by the way). I had to mention it because the post is just so delightfully bitchy. LO-OVE!
Eww. When I said to my fellow Hyphenators that we needed more interesting, morally ambiguous, Asian Americans to write about, this […]

CVK
The latest issue of TIME Magazine has an article titled “Can DNA Reveal Your Roots?” about the growing numbers of people turning to DNA tests to find out about their ethnic heritage. The article points out that many of these testing companies are relying on insufficient data, and thus are probably providing faulty results. This […]

CVK
Great to see young mixed actors speaking up about their identities! Right on the heels of Wentworth Miller’s candid interview comes an article on Jessica Alba. Talking to ContactMusic.com, Alba sounds off on racism and pigeonholing:
The part Mexican, part Danish star has experienced racism first hand and is appalled at the treatment her parents received […]

CVK
I haven’t seen this film yet, but it seems to fall into the “yes we’re mixed but why even mention it because it doesn’t matter to the story” category, which as you know we love here at MMW because it shows that mixed people and families are (gasp!) normal. Richard is a white dad of […]