Race Remixed: Shades of Grey Shining Like the Colors of the Rainbow

Interview with Chandra Prasad

We had the pleasure of interviewing Chandra Prasad, a multiracial editor and author whose ethnic background is a combination of Southeast Indian, Italian, Swedish, and English. As the editor of Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience (2006), Prasad compiled the works of different multiracial writers into one anthology whose purpose is to share the experience of growing up with a multiracial background. We wanted to learn more about Chandra’s life and career, so we asked her some questions.

Teen Voices: Describe your experience growing up as a multiracial teen.
Chandra Prasad: I was fortunate to grow up in a caring, loving, and nurturing family. Academically, the public school I attended was strong. However, the student body was quite homogeneous* and I never really felt like I fit in. In a way, my feeling of separateness ended up being a positive thing because it helped me learn to be independent and to adapt. It also fueled me to become more aware of the issues that multiracial youth face, and, ultimately, to put together Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience.

TV: Being a teen involves discovering one’s identity, so how does being multiracial affect teens and their path to self-discovery?
Chandra: Being a teen is a hard, but also exhilarating time of life. You are figuring out who you are and what defines your character and personality. Multiracial teens have the added challenge of coming from a complex cultural and racial background. But their complexity, I believe, can be a powerful tool for good. As I write in the foreword to the Mixed anthology, multiracial people can literally act as the solder* between various communities; they can straddle cultural expectations. Since multiracial teens resist easy classification, they have the capacity to view the world in a broad, open-minded way, to resist stereotypes, and to show others by example that most boundaries are illusory.*

TV: What inspired you to be a writer?
Chandra: From the age of nine or ten I knew I wanted to be a writer. There wasn’t one catalyst* propelling me in that direction. Rather, I had a general love of reading and writing that I was determined to translate into a career. Around the age of fifteen or sixteen I became more serious about the writing process and started to research the publishing industry and what it takes to be an author, including what types of books are considered most saleable, how to find a literary agent, etc.

TV: How did you go about about collecting the works for your anthology? What specific kinds of stories were you looking for?
Chandra: The experience of being multiracial is not a singular one. I wanted to show the broad range of lives that multiracial people lead. There is no better way to do that than through short stories, which are versatile, easy to relate to, and always interesting to analyze. The stories in Mixed are different in terms of setting, characters, tone, and style. I chose such a wide range because the multiracial experience cannot be separated from diversity.

TV: Are you active in any multiracial groups?
Chandra: I maintain a steady dialogue with people who run multiracial organizations such as Mavin.net and the Association of Multiethnic Americans. There are a lot of multiracial people out there who are doing fulfilling and groundbreaking work.

TV: What suggestions could you give to teens who want to start a multiracial/multicultural group?
Chandra: There is no better time than now for teens to start a multiracial group or to become involved in an existing one. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of online groups devoted to multiracial issues. In high schools and colleges across the nation, multiracial student groups are proliferating*. I would suggest taking a look at existing organizations for inspiration. See what kinds of multiracial advocacy, outreach, networking, and social opportunities are out there, and which you would be most interested in pursuing. If you want to organize a group in your school or community, don’t be afraid to ask for advice and support.

TV: What kinds of changes do you hope to see for multiracial people in the future?
Chandra: I hope to see multiracial people gain more visibility, recognition, and influence. I think a lot of progress has already been made, and I’m hopeful that this upward trend will continue. By 2050, roughly 20% of Americans will be multiracial, so I believe greater awareness is inevitable*, fortunately.

* Homogenous: All the same
* Solder: Something that joins or cements
* Illusory: Encouraging a false belief
* Catalyst: An agent of change (you may recognize this from chemistry class)
* Proliferating: Growing or spreading out
* Inevitable: Impossible to avoid or prevent

For More Information:
http://www.censusscope.org/uis/chart_multi.html
Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experiences, by Chandra Prasad
MAVIN: The Mixed Race Experience
http://www.projectrace.com/teenprojectrace/

Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki, www.diversitydtg.com, www.blackflix.com,
www.censusscope.org, www.chandraprasad.com/bio.php

main 1 2