Mixed Remixed Festival Brings Multiracial Stories To Los Angeles : NPR

Given increased intermarriage, not surprising that storytelling becomes part of the experience:

A couple weeks ago, about a thousand people gathered at a museum in Los Angeles for Mixed Remixed, a free two-day festival featuring events like a memoir writing workshop, a Loving Day Wine and Cheese reception, a screening of multiracial short films and a panel on biracial hair (moderated by Code Switch’s own Karen Grigsby Bates!).

In the past, comedians Key and Peele have performed at the festival; this year, Taye Diggs, Willy Wilkinson and Natashia Deon took the stage. The performers and panelists, along with regular attendees, come together to celebrate the “mixed experience.”

As a biracial woman, I was intrigued by this description, but curious to know what exactly it meant. After all, the question of what it means to be racially mixed has been a subject of controversy in this country for hundreds of years, and there’s no consensus on what it means to have a mixed experience.

So I called up Heidi Durrow, who founded Mixed Remixed in 2014. We talked about the multiracial “family nod,” hugging our white moms, and something she calls “mulatto fatigue.” She also told me what the festival is about, why it’s important, and who exactly it’s for.

Durrow says she started the festival partly out of selfishness. She’s Danish and African-American, and her 2011 novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, tells the story of a young Afro-Danish orphan who goes to live with her grandmother in a mostly black neighborhood. While Durrow was shopping the manuscript, a lot of publishers told her there was no demographic for “an Afro-Viking coming-of-age tale.”

Eventually, of course, Durrow did find a publisher, and her book became a New York Times best-seller. But she knew lots of other multiracial folks are still struggling to be heard. So she decided to create a space to connect people who wanted to tell — and hear — these stories. The first festival was in 2014, and it’s always held at the Japanese American National Museum.

It’s important to note that this festival isn’t just for people who consider themselves multiracial. Durrow says it’s not about “mixed pride,” and one of her biggest discouragements is when people ask if they’re allowed at the festival even if they’re not mixed-race.

“Our greatest goal is for people to recognize that the mixed experience is very much the American experience,” says Durrow. “Mixed-race pride, I think, is a difficulty because I don’t want to valorize whatever someone’s idea is about that. We don’t want to buy into ideas of white privilege or light-skinned privilege. What we want to say is, we really are all part of the same story, and we don’t have to be ashamed or invisible or feel lonely in this experience. … The festival is about having a space to say, ‘I’m connected to this person who you don’t even think I’m connected to.’ ”

This year’s attendees included families of transracial adoption, the children of U.S. immigrants, a man who wanted to better understand the experience of his multiracial partner, folks who live in racially diverse neighborhoods, folks who don’t. Durrow says that all of these people are part of the mixed experience.

“I feel like my mom gets to be as mixed as I do,” Durrow says. When, say, visiting a black history museum with her white mother, she worries that some might see her mom as an intruder. In those moments, she says, “I always want to wrap my arms around my mom and make sure people know that she’s not just ‘some white lady.’ She’s connected to me. And that matters.”

Source: Mixed Remixed Festival Brings Multiracial Stories To Los Angeles : Code Switch : NPR