Are You Mixed? A War Bride's Granddaughter's Narrative of Lives In-Between Contested Race Gender Class and Power

A volume in Research for Social Justice: Personal~Passionate~Participatory InquirySeries Editors: Ming Fang He Georgia Southern University and JoAnn Phillion Purdue UniversityIn Are You Mixed? Sonia Janis explores the spaces in-between race and place from the perspective of an educator who is multi-racial. As she reflects on her own experiences as a seventh grade student up to her eventual appointment as a school administrator she learns of the complexity of situating oneself in predetermined demographic categories. She shares how she explores the intricacies of undefined spaces that teach her to embrace differences contradictions and complexities in schools neighborhoods and communities.Exploring the in-betweenness (Anzaldua & Keating 2002; He 2003 2010) of her life as a multi-race person problematizes imbedded notions of race gender class and power. The power of this memoir lies in its narrative possibilities to capture the contradictions and paradoxes of lives in-between race and place to honor the subtleties fluidities and complexities of such experience and to cultivate understanding towards individual ... experience and the multicultural/multiracial contexts that shape and are shaped by such experience (He 2003 p. xvii). This memoir creates new ways to think about and write about in-between experience and their relevance to multicultural and multiracial education.Janis challenges educators teachers administrators and policy makers to view the educational experience of students with multiracial multicultural and multilingual backgrounds by shattering predetermined categories and stereotyped classifications and looking into unknown and fluid realms of the in-betweenness of their lives. This challenge helps create equitable and just opportunities and engender culturally responsive and inspiring curricular and learning environments to bring out the best potential in all diverse schools communities neighborhoods tribes and societies.