December | 2016 | Mixed Roots Stories

MXRS Workshops: Healing and Activism in Marin

On November 4, MXRS board member, Kaily Heitz, presented “Social Justice Fatigue: Creating a Supportive Environment for Activism” at the Breaking Through Shades of Color: Transforming Race Relations and Conflict conference at Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS) in Monterey, CA. This workshop focuses on the idea of “social justice fatigue,” a term that has been defined and presented for several student organizations by our own Dr. Chandra Crudup. “Social justice fatigue” is a concept that essentializes the way that social justice organizers, particularly people of color, experience burnout caused by intentional and unintentional exposure to injustices. The workshop is designed to identify the various ways that we feel attacked and brainstorm how to balance sources of fatigue with practices of self-care.

The MIIS workshop audience was comprised of students, activists, and Monterey community members. Participants were first asked to pair up and discuss the ways that they felt attacked at multiple levels. Many discussed social identifiers of class and gender as a source of fatigue. After reviewing issues of structural racism and injustice, participants went back to their pairs and talked about how vulnerable members of their community might be facing compounded injustices. A poignant examples came from one woman, who discussed the relevance of considering micro and macro aggressions with regard to the large population of migrant farm and hospitality workers in the area.

We ended by drafting a toolkit that enabled participants to identify ways they felt fatigued, self-care routines that brought back balance in the fight for justice, and ideas for fostering a more equitable environment for other activists and people of color in their communities.

Participants were asked to write down how they felt that their needs were being “attacked” (on the right side of the chart) and the ways that they find balance (on the left side of the chart).

Although none of us realized quite how necessary this workshop would be in the coming days, it could not have come at a better time. This election acts as a call to action, and a reminder of the ongoing importance of our work as activists, artists, and storytellers. It also reminds us to hold one another. The most important self-care advice I heard repeated at the workshop at MIIS was to find and reach out to one’s community when feeling anxious or stressed.

We are so grateful that you are a part of the Mixed Roots Stories community. We aim to make story a practice of self-care and healing, of justice, and awakening–for ourselves and all those whose lives we may unexpectedly touch with our stories. Is writing or making art part of your self-care routine? We invite you to share with us how you are taking care of yourself in these challenging times.

And, we’re here to support you! If you are interested in bringing our “Social Justice Fatigue” workshop, or others, to your school or organization, contact us at info@mixedrootsstories.org.

Mixed Roots Stories Performance Sampler @ CMRS 2017

Mixed Roots Stories Performance Sampler 2017

February 26th, 2:30 – 4:00 p.m.

At the 4th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference, four dynamic performers will share a sampling of their work followed by an open discussion with the artists on craft, process and engaging with themes of the mixed experience.

Elizabeth Chin and the Laboratory of Speculative Ethnology

The Jefferson-Hemings Complex
Elizabeth Chin is an ethnographer and anthropologist with a multifaceted practice that includes performative scholarship, collaborative research, and experimental writing. A professor at Art Center College of Design in the MFA program Media Design Practices/Field, she has published widely on children, consumption, anthropological practice. She has performed and done ethnography in the United States, Haiti, Uganda, and Cuba.

Gregory Diggs-Yang

Becoming Korean, While Growing Out My Afro: A Personal Narrative about a Moment in My Own Identity Development as a Mixed Korean and Black American
Gregory (Chan-wook) Diggs-Yang has a Bachelor’s (BA) in Education from Illinois State University and a Master’s (M.Ed.) in Educational Administration from UCLA. Greg has most recently moved from South Korea where he worked at Seoul National Universities as the Curriculum Coordinator for the IETTP (Teacher Training) and was a co-host of the Arirang Radio segment, ”Footprints of Korea with Chan-wook”. In addition he served as the President of the M.A.C.K. Foundation (Movement of the Advancement of Cultural-diversity of Koreans). A grassroots organization that supports multicultural schools and increases recognition and awareness of the diversity of Koreans. His areas of interest include multicultural education, mixed-heritage, and social justice. Greg is currently a doctoral candidate in the College of Education, Multicultural Education program at the University of Washington, Seattle. His dissertation looks at the support of biracial identity development through educational spaces.

Genevieve Erin O’Brien

Sugar Rebels

Genevieve Erin O’Brien is a Queer mixed race Vietnamese/Irish/German/American woman. She is an artist, a filmmaker, an organizer, a cook/private chef, and an educator who lives and works in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. O’Brien was a Fulbright Fellow in Vietnam, a recipient of the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles and Center for Cultural Innovation’s Creative Economic Development Fund. in 2016 she went to Hanoi, Vietnam as a US Dept. of State/ZERO1 American Arts Incubator Artist for a project highlighting LGBTQ visibility and equality. Her newest work More Than Love on the Horizon: West Coast Remix and Sugar Rebels were recently commissioned and presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

For additional conference programing and other details visit the CMRS website.

CMRS 2017 Film Screenings

Mixed Roots Stories will feature the following two films during 4th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference:

Coloured: Mixed-Race Voices from South Africa

Documentary: Word of Honour: Reclaiming Mandela’s Promise

Directed by Kiersten Dunbar Chace

Photo Exhibition by Rushay Booysen

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2017 1:00 – 2:30pm

cmrs17_wordofhonour_banner
In 1997, two years prior to his exit from politics, President Nelson Mandela visited the Coloured (mixed-race) township of Bonteheuwel. While there, he delivers an informal speech to a crowd of men, women and children who feared their future once he left office. In 2014, twenty years post apartheid, a small South African crew led by director Kiersten Dunbar Chace traveled 7000 kilometers across the country to get a pulse on the broader Coloured community in South Africa and to bear witness to the promises he made that day in Bonteheuwel.

This beautifully filmed documentary shares the experience of seven individuals of different age and economic status from five different provinces and is held together by the fiery words of a Capetonian poet, questioning the definition of an apartheid crime.

Mixed Match by Jeff Chiba Stearns

Mixed Marrow founder Athena Mari Asklipiadis

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2017 5:00 – 7:00pm

mixed-match-poster-11x17-with-laurels-web

When being mixed race is more than just an identity, it’s a matter of life of death.

Mixed Match is an important human story told from the perspective of mixed race blood cancer patients who are forced to reflect on their multiracial identities and complex genetics as they struggle with a seemingly impossible search to find bone marrow donors, all while exploring what role race plays in medicine. With the multiracial community becoming one of the fastest growing demographics in North America, being mixed race is no longer just about an identity, it can be a matter of life and death.

The screening will be followed by a bone marrow drive with Mixed Marrow

and CMRS conference and Hapa Japan Festival closing program.

Co-sponsored by Kaya Students for Independent Publishing

Free tickets will be limited. Check back for a link to register.

For additional conference programing and other details visit the CMRS website.

Day of walk-ins will also be welcome pending ticket availability.

Mixed Roots Stories LIVE 2017 performers

Mixed Roots Stories LIVE Performance 2017

February 25th, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.

Mixed Roots Stories will open the 4th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference with live performances by the following:

karimi-standing-72 Robert Farid Karimi

Disco Jesus – new work TBA!

Robert Farid Karimi is a community engagement specialist and comedic storyteller. He works with everyday people in cities, companies, and health centers worldwide on making healthy messaging delicious using comedy, culture and food with his culinary cultural engagement project: ThePeoplesCook Project. And, he speaks on issues as mixed race/consciousness, food politics, community deliciousness and the power of the Fool/Trickster to change the world. www.KaRRRimi.com

Crystal Shaniece Roman

Black Latina the Play

In 2008 Ms. Roman launched The Black Latina Movement, LLC (BLM) and began performing BLM’s first written theatrical piece: a one woman show about the lives of dark-skinned Latinas and African American Latinas entitled Black Latina. In early 2013 Black Latina received a new format featuring an all female ensemble cast starring Judy Torres; during the fall the revamped Black Latina saw the success of multiple sold out shows. Since 2013 Black Latina the Play has been on tour in the Northeast at campuses such as: Hamilton College, Penn State University, Community College of Baltimore County-Essex and Lehigh University. Most recently Crystal revised the one woman version of Black Latina the Play after being invited to perform at the Smithsonian Institute for Hispanic Heritage Month Festival Latinidad- Looking into Latina Women’s American Experiences September 2016.

Carly Bates

Musings of Rachel Dolezal

Carly Bates is an emerging artist from Phoenix, Arizona. With a background in music and piano performance, she is active in the Arizona arts community as a creative collaborator with musicians, movers, poets, actors: storytellers. Having recently graduated from Arizona State University, Carly is currently working with a local playback theatre company called Essential Theater and is also the editor for the Mixed Roots Stories Commons.

Zavé Gayatri Martohardjono

Untitled (Balinese dance study)

Zavé Gayatri Martohardjono makes intercultural, geopolitical, boundary-defying, high glam performance, video, and installations. Interested in embodied risk-taking and cross-cultural imagery, they combine improvisation with their own cultural roots: Indonesian mythology and dance, queer iconography. Brooklyn based, Zavé has shown at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Boston Center for the Arts, Center for Performance Research, Center for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Movement Research at Judson Church, Recess, SOMArts, Winslow Garage, among others. They have been an artist in residence at the Shandaken Project at Storm King, La MaMa Experimental Theatre, Chez Bushwick, and an Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Workshop Fellow.

Lisa Marie Rollins

Performing an excerpt from SIDE CHICK: This ain’t no Harlequin Romance

Lisa Marie Rollins is playwright, poet, freelance director and dramaturg. Most recently she co-directed Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment (Crowded Fire Theater) and a reading of Tearrance Chisholm’s Br’er Cotton (Playwrights Foundation). She is the director of All Atheists are Muslimby Zahra Noorbakhsh and was co-producer of W. Kamau Bell’s “Ending Racism in About and Hour”. Lisa Marie performed her acclaimed solo play, Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girl’s Story of Being Adopted by a White Family…That Aren’t Celebrities in festivals, universities and academic conferences across the US. She was Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley, a CALLALOO Journal London Writing Workshop Fellow and an alumni in Poetry of VONA Writing Workshop. Her writing is published in Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, River, Blood, Corn Literary Journal, Line/Break, As/Us Literary Journal,The Pacific Review and others. Currently, she is finishing her new manuscript of poems, Compass for which she received the 2016 Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award from SF Foundation. She is in development with her new play, Token. She holds degrees from The Claremont Graduate University and UC Berkeley. She is a Lecturer at St Mary’s College in Performance Studies, and a Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco. Lisa Marie is a 2015-16 playwright member of Just Theater Play Lab and Artist-in-Residence at BRAVA Theater for Women in San Francisco.

Fred Sasaki EAT TO JAPANESE: Achieving ethnic authenticity by eating, shopping, emojis

A step-by-step guide to being genuine authentic

Fred Sasaki is the art director for Poetry magazine and a gallery curator for the Poetry Foundation. He is the author of Real Life Emails (Tiny Hardcore Press, 2017) and the zine series Fred Sasaki’s and Fred Sasaki’s Four-Pager Guide To: How to Fix You.

The Performance will be held at the Norris Cinema Theater 850 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90089

This event is Co-Sponsored by the USC School of Cinematic Arts

Free tickets will be limited. Check back for a link to register.

For additional conference programing and other details visit the CMRS website.

Day of walk-ins will also be welcome pending ticket availability.