RN
Canadian director Dawn Wilkinson had a very reliable source for her first feature Devotion: herself. The film tells the story of 11-year old Alice, a bi-racial girl who loses her mother due to her dad’s drunk driving and has to struggle not just with the loss of a parent, but also her dad’s alcoholism, and […]

JC
The Los Angeles Times reviews “Tea“, the new production by Velina Hasu Houston about war brides and their lives and families. The show is currently running at the International City Theater in Long Beach, CA. This reviewer doesn’t have many nice things to say and seems to think that it is all done in a […]

CVK
Personally I’m sick to death of the whole Strom Thurmond / Essie Mae Washington-Williams thing, but it is my duty to report that yet another book is coming out soon on the topic later this month. Dateline Alabama reviews Strom: The Complicated Personal and Political Life of Strom Thurmond by Jack Bass and Marilyn W. […]

CVK
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte sounds like it would be a fun summer read. The protagonist, like the author herself, is black and Jewish. Here’s the book description:
When a mystery writer cries bloody murder, everyone blames her overactive imagination . . .
Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks […]

CVK
NPR’s All Things Considered did a story on Mavin’s Generation Mix tour. You can listen to the feed online here: A Generation of Mixed Race Youth Speaks Out. The story is pretty basic, but at least it doesn’t further reinforce any of the awful stereotypes out there about mixed folks. Sometimes, that alone is […]

CVK
The San Fransisco Chronicle covers a study of Asian Americans in primetime TV that demonstrates (surprise, surprise) that they’re way under-represented:
Asians, who make up 5 percent of the U.S. population, play 2.7 percent of regular characters. It also shows virtually no Asian actors are on situation comedies, and the characters they play in dramas tend […]

JC

The NY Times featured an article in their Sunday Styles section about Mavin’s Generation Mix tour and some of the other activism that is coming out of the mixed community. We were especially excited to have Mixed Media Watch mentioned! This is definitely one of the better articles we have seen written about the mixed […]

JC
Nirali Magazine highlights Navi Rawat, an up and coming actress in her 20s. She is recently getting a lot of attention for her ability to play a diversity of roles (the New York Daily News just named her a “Hot Face to Watch” in its January issue). In this article, she discusses her mixed heritage […]

JC
Nicholas Jones of the US Census Bureau has just released a report on the multiracial respondents of the 2000 Census, We the People of More Than One Race in the United States.
This report provides a portrait of the Two or More Races population in the United States and discusses the twelve largest race combinations within […]

CVK
The Philadelphia Inquirer interviews former NBA star Charles Barkley, who is promoting his new book, Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? in which he interviews 13 influential Americans - from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to Tiger Woods and George Lopez - who speak frankly about race and racism:
Barkley’s complexity enhances his controversial nature. […]

JC
The Tennessean talks to Nate Creekmore, a senior at Lipscomb University. Creekmore has won several awards for Maintaining, the comic strip he writes for the campus paper. His own experiences being mixed have definitely fueled the comic, which features a biracial character named Marcus. It’s possible that when he graduates, Maintaining will make it into […]

CVK

Woah. Last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model was… interesting. They did a photo shoot where each model was transformed into an ethnicity different from their own, and were supposed to emote that ethnicity from within, or something. In one priceless moment, Tyra berated a model for not emoting “Eskimo” enough, saying: “Think about […]

JC
Now…I’m not one to gossip ;), but…looks like Life & Style is getting canned and people are pointing the finger at Kimora. Her diva ways seem to have turned off more than a couple of people. The assumption about why she has failed to bring in the “urban” watchers is interesting. Perhaps the statement is […]

CVK
The Contra Costa Times interviews Emily Raboteau, author of the newly released novel, The Professor’s Daughter. The article is pretty cheesy (the doll metaphor they start off with is STRAIGHT out of “Imitation of Life”) but the book sounds good. Like the novel’s protagonist, Raboteau is a young biracial woman. Here’s part of the Publisher’s […]

AUM (a new MMW contributor!)
In this article from the NY Times Opinion pages, Armand Marie Leroi argues that the concept of race as a genetic reality, a concept which we had all replaced with the easier-to swallow “race as a social construct” model, may actually have biological basis.
“The idea that human races are […]

JC
UCBerkeley News follows up on their article of last week about four mixed students in order to highlight some additional thoughts from other members of the Berkeley community.
Thus, for me, race is an artificial construct, which isolates me from those unknowledgeable of the biracial experience. At the same time, my races help me […]

CVK
This is the letter I wrote to Essence magazine, complimenting them on their profile of Mariah Carey. Historically, Essence has not been the most forward-looking in the way they’ve handled mixed race issues or interracial relationships. Therefore, it was refreshing to see a very different take on the topic in their April 2005 issue. In […]

CVK
Mariah Carey graces the cover of Essence’s April issue. Though the coverline takes a one-drop stance (”Mariah Carey: America’s Most Misunderstood Black Woman”), the article inside deals almost completely with her mixed identity, and makes for pretty interesting reading. Here are some excerpts:
So this isn’t a twenty-first-century version of Imitation of Life. Still, race and […]

JC
Deborah Santana, wife of Carlos Santana, discusses her experiences, relationships, and mixed identity in new memoir, Space Between the Stars.
Born Deborah King in San Francisco in 1951, Santana is the daughter of a biracial marriage. Her father, African-American blues pioneer, guitarist, and distinguished tenor, Saunders King, cut the first significant electric blues record, 1942’s “SK […]

JC
The Los Angeles Times talks race with Senator Barack Obama. The interviewer assumes that Barack will have a hard time should he ever decide to run for the US Presidency, due to the things he discloses in his memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. In this book originally published before […]