Mixed-Race Identity Across Generations #substack #shorts

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]So, part of this is uh you're mixed race, I'm mixed race, um and that's uh that's an unusual perspective uh or has been until fairly recently in this world. However, you grew up under the shadow of one of the most famous mixed race writers of her generation, Han Suyin, who I actually until I started reading your work, I didn't realize that she was Chinese and Belgian. I thought she was Chinese because she's so enmeshed with the history of modern China. Um were you aware of that kind of mixed race perspective or coloration of of her work or as you became a writer, did it factor into your sense of yourself as a writer? Oh, completely. I mean, you couldn't be around Grandma without being unaware that she was mixed race. It was uh deeply identity-forming for her um in a very different way than it was for me, but but so the issue or the the field of being mixed race was on the table from the time I was born. And and Grandma was very aware that I was the closest thing um to her in the family. Um and so um but I you know, she she grew up um the child of a of a Chinese uh father and a Belgian mother, which is the gender split that's much rarer um especially at the time.

[00:01:29]>> my grandparents were the same. Yes, and that's rarer, especially at your grandparents' time or my grandmother's uh parents' time. My you know, my mother is Chinese, my dad is a Jew, that's almost like just uh dime a dozen, right?

[00:01:42]Especially in New York. So, and especially when I grew up in the '60s and '70s. So, there was a very different stance. The the I occupied a different space in the world as a mixed race person in New York in the '60s and '70s The than I than my grandmother did. I mean, you know, she suffered a great deal.