Digital Story Proposal
I seek to explore some of the relationships with family and minority experiences that are not traditionally found in mixed narratives. Specifically, I want to highlight the lack of connection with my Chinese background primarily due to my father’s Americanization. I foresee difficulties balancing my own narrative with the history of my parents and telling my side without placing any blame. I strive to focus on my own experience, using my parents’ history to explain why. The first part will focus on my youth, growing up in a diverse part of Montgomery County, Maryland and not “seeing color.” I will talk about my friends growing up, particularly in high school having a group of Asian friends and noticing the differences between my life and theirs. I hope to then explore the relationship I have with my mother’s side of the family versus my father.
I hope that through this narrative, other mixed people (especially those with minority fathers) will feel seen. I also think it has the potential to explore the ways minority culture is related to gender (“mother’s bring their culture”).
In doing initial research for this project I also found that most accounts of interracial (or mixed or multiethnic or other iterations of families consisting of a white parent and minority parent) were mostly focused on Black/White families. I recognize the importance of those stories, however, it is a fundamentally different experience from what I hope to explore in my own story.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before ( 2018) is one of the first representations of mixed Asians in mainstream media that I remember having (though the actress for the main character is not mixed nor is the author of the original book). I was excited to watch a movie, then read a book that had a mixed girl as a heroine, even though it wasn’t the main focus of the story. Unfortunately, that is where the representation ends. Furthermore, it featured a white father and Korean mother, once again featuring a familial relationship fundamentally different from what I seek to explore.
The Buzzfeed video titled “What Mixed Race Asians Will Never Tell You” was published in 2018 and featured four mixed race Asian Americans of various descents talking about their experiences. They talk about not feeling like they are a part of either side of their family, and not being accepted by the Asian community they are a part of. They talk about the importance of representation in mainstream culture and how despite all the negative aspects, they feel proud of being mixed. They also emphasize the importance of finding communities where mixed race people feel accepted, how the multiracial community itself is a safe place. This video was a great introduction into the struggles that mixed people face and I hope that more people watch it to better understand the issues from multiple perspectives. In my own story, I hope to explore my personal narrative, adding further details to the general experiences they explored in the video. I hope to add more depth to some of the issues that they discussed in the video.
A study done by a UCLA researcher explored the relationship between multiracial identity and well-being (Schlabach, 2013). Specifically, it explored differences in well-being based on racial identification, then further divided the data to see if there was a difference depending on the gender and racial identity of the parents. Finally, it also explored the effect of increased social capital on well-being. They found significant differences in emotional well-being, with multiracial individuals faring worse than the White monoracial category. Gender and racial identity of the parent also had an impact, finding that those with minority mothers experience lower levels of emotional and social well-being. However, it also found that well-being differences are not significant when there is a high level of family social integration. It emphasizes the importance of labeling mixed race as a distinct category, as the experiences are fundamentally different. The study ends with “future research might also find that race and gender are not the factors contributing to negative well-being outcomes for multiracial Asians.” This study brings important research about the mixed American community, exploring the broad scale patterns of experience and specifically exploring the impact of race and gender of parents on the mixed individuals. I hope my personal narrative can add further data to this research and that my story will also contribute to a knowledge base about mixed (Asian) experiences.
I foresee mostly using images of my own family, using anything else as support. I hope to keep a familiar voice, keeping in mind that my intended audience is other mixed children and my purpose is to tell my own personal narrative. I would like to explore music more but I envision using background music to further emphasize the story; as my freshman world music professor liked to say, music adds another depth of emotion to stories. I do not have a clear vision for the script yet, but hope to spend a lot of time developing it.
Works Cited
Buzzfeed. (2018, May 8). What Mixed Race Asians Will Never Tell You [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/FZWn-VRkZTw
Johnson, Susan. (Director). (2018). To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before [Film]. Overbrook Entertainment and Awesomeness Films.
Schlabach S. (2013). The Importance of Family, Race, and Gender for Multiracial Adolescent Well-being. Family relations, 62(1), 154–174. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00758.