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damali ayo is a conceptual artist and writer who identifies as black but whose grandmother was white. Addressing issues such as reparations and the physical color of her skin, ayo is always pushing the boundaries of polite speech to scratch the uncomfortable itch of institutionalized racism. - More at damaliayo.com |
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Phillip Blanchett is a musician with the group Pamyua, based in Alaska. With both Yupik Eskimo and African American ancestry, Blanchett demonstrates his mixed-race heritage by performing a mix of Native American Alaskan, R&B, and African roots music. - More about Pamyua here |
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Joshua Wolf Coleman, an actor with an ancestry of at least five ethnicities, is reluctant to name them, because he fears that he might be typecast in a specific ethnic stereotype. Up to now he has had a successful career playing various ethnicities as well as characters with no specific background. - More at www.osfashland.org |
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Phyllis Fast, painter and professor of Anthropology, identifies mostly with her mother’s heritage of Koykan Athabaskan Native Alaskan, but is often asked her ethnicity because of her physical characteristics. She has channeled her frustration at having to explain herself into her unique and vibrant painting. - More about Phyllis Fast here |
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Velina Hasu Houston is a playwright, poet, essayist and screenwriter who draws from her experience among the multicultural world of military base life after WWII and the relationship between her African American and Native American father and Japanese-born mother.
- More at velinahasuhouston.com |
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Robert Karimi is a mixed media artist who performs with murals, poetry, and other performance pieces. One of Karimi’s favorite pieces is a beat poem about the meeting between his Iranian father and Guatamalan mother. |
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Thomas Lauderdale, is an internationally known pianist and leader of the group Pink Martini. He is a Mixed Race Asian who was adopted and had little contact culturally with his ethnicity while growing up. - More at www.pinkmartini.com |
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Juan Rivera LeBron is Puerto Rican, and considers all Puerto Ricans as mixed heritage. He has played various ethnicities over the years and has recently found more open-mindedness about Mixed Race characters, but still a reluctance to play different looking actors against each other as a couple. - More at www.osfashland.org |
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Soneela Nankani has wanted to be an actor since she was 13. Half Indian-American and half Guinian-American, the young actress grew up in a multi-cultural neighborhood but has found more racist attitudes in theater hiring. - More at www.osfashland.org |
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Lou Diamond Phillips, an actor with primarily Filipino and English/Scottish heritage, has often played Native American or Latino characters because of his appearance. He is one in a long line of actors who have broken barriers of racial stereotypes in American movies. |
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Demetra Pittman has had a long acting career performing in live theater – her favorite parts being Lady Macbeth, Hecuba, and Prospero. Pittman is of African American, Japanese, Native American and Scots-Irish descent. - More at www.osfashland.org |
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Heather Raffo is an actress and playwright whose work 9 Parts of Desire follows the lives of nine Iraqi women. Raffo is a blonde-haired Iraqi-American, but finds herself frequently the only person of Iraqi descent that audience members meet, and acts as the best cultural bridge she can.
More at www.heatherraffo.com |
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Lisa See has written award-winning fiction and non-fiction about the Chinese and Chinese-American experience. Brought up in a prominent Los Angeles Chinese-American family, See had freckles and red hair, and the unique experience to be a part of a culture that she could escape from if she wanted to. - More at www.lisasee.com |
