[Dancer Post] My Mixed-Ass (part 3)

Read Part I
Read Part II
Sarah Chien concludes...

Now, I’ve come to really embrace my racial ambiguity. It’s become a game I love to play, the chameleon, carefully code shifting as needed. I actually think I’m most comfortable in the role of “closeted token [insert racial category here].” Perhaps that’s the anthropologist in me, or just an exploitation of the privilege of racial ambiguity, but I actually feel most comfortable when I’m blending in with a group and yet keeping my official racial identity in my back pocket for when needed. I’m often in the situation where I’m the only white girl, Latina girl, Chinese girl, Jewish girl, American girl, or mixed girl, depending on the crowd.

I grew up being the only Jew with my Mom teaching my classmates about traditions like Hanukkah and Passover. When I work in the community garden in my neighborhood in East Harlem, speaking in Spanish alongside all the local immigrant moms, they actually delight in telling their un-initiated friends, “Did you know she not Latina? She’s actually…” and then they will rattle off my whole racial profile! The same thing happens when I hang out with my Ecuadorian friends. And I realized that in the Window Sex Project, I’m the only dancer not of African American descent - interesting, and also for me, delightful! Being the only one (of whatever) highlights my ability to successfully transform, or simply to be open-minded enough to break the racial boundaries that I never really saw in the first place. One thing that growing up multi-racial subtly taught me was that racial categories are fluid and not really that important. In my family, culture was celebrated, but not puritanically preserved. Mixing, shifting, creating new identities---nothing new there--- that had happened from the moment I was born.

Sara in Ecuador

In Ecuador, I actively sought out places where I would be the only American, a position I coveted while I snubbed my fellow Americans for being obnoxious expats, ignorant volunteers, or silly tourists. A good Ecuadorian friend of mine once observed that I was always defining myself by what I was not i.e. “not one of those.” I keep my individual self distinct and play-up my repertoire of identities as the situation presents itself. When I attend a synagogue where I need to be Jewish I put on a silver mezuzah necklace (a Jewish religious symbol), make sure my hair is curly, and that I wear a long skirt and nothing too revealing up top. For Latina, it’s about speaking the language, listening to loud reggaeton, reading books on the subway in Spanish, and using ambiguous statements like “I just moved back” (I’ve been taken for an illegal immigrant when speaking Spanish in immigrant areas of Queens!). For Chinese, which was never really possible, I would tightly braid my hair so that you couldn’t see the curls. And for “half-black” I would put my hair in a ponytail close to the top of my head, letting it frizz. I always said that if one day I auditioned for Alvin Ailey I’d make sure to get a tan and cut my hair short (then it’ll curl tightly close to my head)! In Ecuador I even passed for indigenous by wearing local traditional dress and adapted mannerisms of the people where I was. Curiously enough, each time that I did this I would get more attention from local men - as if by embodying their familiar idea of beauty, I was suddenly accessible (and beautiful) in a way that I wasn’t before.

Jewish family dinner

Chinese Lion Club

In general, I thrive on this identity hide-and–seek because it allows me to teach the world about the fluidity of identity that I’ve always seen as natural. Race to me was always secondary to humanity. When I look at my father my first association is "there’s my Dad," not "oh look, a Chinese man." Playing with people’s presumptions is my way of showing them that race isn’t as obvious and fact-like as they thought.

I think that’s why the Jewish missionaries always bother me. I hate being in situations where my ambiguity is taken away and like most everyone else I’m assumed to be one flat thing. In Ecuador it infuriated me when taxi drivers, hoping to add a gringa surcharge to my fare, would ask me where I was from. I would always avoid the direct answer saying vehemently “I LIVE here, I live here” in my best local accent. I reserve my right to be an exception, thank you very much.

Like any minority group, the best tactic is to turn positive what was once used against you. As a “mixed” or multiracial person, I know I’m the future, but until I become a majority, I’m basking in the interesting, complicated, fun that is being something different. I decide who I am. What I am is not any concern of yours, especially on the street.

Come see me both expose others pre-conceptions, and celebrate those I choose to embody at The Window Sex Project on Saturday Nov. 12th!