217: The Biracial Asian Experience in America

If you’re listening to this episode when it’s released, we’re now in May of 2023, which is also AAPI Heritage Month. There are a lot of names for this month, which is great, as there are also a lot of countries and ethnicities represented by the simple word “Asian”. But one group of people that is often left out of the overarching Asian umbrella are the biracial Asians - and, given our own identities in this space, this is something that we experience regularly.

So, to kick off AAPI Heritage Month from a perspective not often discussed, we’re focusing today on our personal stories of being biracial Asian women, and what identity, belonging, and inclusion mean when we look at being Asian in this country through this lens. And, since it’s us, we’ll be throwing in a little bit of history, laws, and psych along the way.

What to listen for:

Sara & Misasha’s personal experiences growing up biracial as one of the OG legally biracial folks in this country’s history
The census data - and how we could only check one box until 2000!
The Loving v. Virginia decision, and how that opened up the door to our families being allowed to exist
How we want more Asian people to stop gatekeeping who is “Asian enough” and instead, start banding together with other marginalized groups to push back against White supremacy – because it’s all of us or none of us.

In this episode, we highlight the podcast Ten Thousand Things. In many Chinese sayings, “ten thousand” is used in a poetic sense to convey something infinite, vast, and unfathomable. For Shin Yu Pai, the award-winning poet and museologist who hosts the podcast, the story of Asians in America is just that. In Ten Thousand Things, Shin Yu explores a collection of objects and artifacts that tell us something about Asian American life – from a second-hand novel to a blue suit worn by Congressman Andy Kim on January 6. Ten Thousand Things is a vibrant, diverse, and bittersweet celebration of Asian America ... and a challenge for all of us to reimagine stories of the past and future. Featured guests this season include Disability Visibility Project podcast host Alice Wong; transgender and non-binary, poet and educator Ebo Barton; and NED founder Eason Yang; among others.

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