Clare Ramsaran – mixed race writer
I’m very happy to be part of the “You don’t look Irish!” panel, in March in San Francisco. Here’s the biography I submitted for the festival brochure:
Clare Ramsaran was born and raised in England, but checks “other” on forms when asked to define her heritage – or creates her own category of “Indo-Guyanese/Irish”. 
She is an alumna of the VONA Voices workshop and is an MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. She is currently working on a novel about two Caribbean brothers who join other young immigrants to London in their pursuit of love (of the inter-racial and queer varieties) and justice. She blogs for Mixed Remixed and her writing has been published in anthologies in the USA and England, and in journals including the St Sebastian Review. Visit her blog at: clareramsaran.blogspot.com
Mixed Love Notes #15 #mixedlovenotes
Mixed Love Notes #14 #mixedlovenotes
Mixed Love Notes #13 #mixedlovenotes
Cush Jumbo: On Growing Up Biracial & Performance
If you’re in New York, you don’t want to miss this one-woman show with Cush Jumbo at the Joe’s Pub, Josephine and I.
After a stunning Broadway run in The River with Hugh Jackman, Jumbo is owning the stage as the iconic Josephine Baker.
“I don’t need to be put into a box,” the English/Nigerian actress has said. Go see this show by an emerging and talented mixed actress who is dedicated to telling our stories!–Heidi Durrow, Festival Founder & Executive Director
Festival Faves Key & Peele in the New Yorker on Growing Up Biracial
We are huge fans of Key & Peele who accepted the Mixed Remixed Festival’s Storyteller’s Prize at the Mixed Remixed Festival in 2014. We absolutely love this New Yorker article written by another favorite of ours Zadie Smith.
Here are some of the gems from the article out this week:
- “The one thing that you don’t figure out as an improviser or a sketch performer is ‘What am I?’ ” Jordan Peele observed. The essence of his talent is multivocal, and he has, in the past, attributed this to his childhood anxiety at having the wrong voice, which, in his case, meant speaking like his mother—that is, speaking “white.”
- “They make you say what race you are, where you check out, and I think that’s ultimately an unhealthy tradition,” says Jordan Peele. His eyes, naturally rather narrow, widened dramatically. “It is crazy that as a kid we’re taught, ‘What is your identity?’ We’re asked that!” Key, who sat at the other end of the trailer, going from having hair to being bald to having hair again, is similarly struck by the irrational nature of racial categories. “The limbic system is alive and well,” he said. “And it’s going, ‘I need to find a category. I need to find a category. If I don’t find a category, I’m not safe.’ ”
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Key: “Jordan and I are . . . we’re biracial.”
Peele: “Yes. Half black, half white.”
Key: “And because of that we find ourselves particularly adept at lying, er, because on a daily basis we have to adjust our blackness.”
[youtube]http://youtu.be/D7VRVQgbDvE[/youtube]
Mixed Love Notes #12 #mixedlovenotes
You don’t look Irish!
I’ve been attending the wonderful Crossroads Irish American Festival in San Francisco for a number of years. My mother is Irish and I have happy memories of going to Ireland during the summer when I was a child, to visit my grandmother and other relatives.
After one of the readings at the Crossroads Festival, my friend, poet Pireeni Sundaralingam, introduced me to one of the organizers, Hillary Flynn. When I mentioned that I was a writer of South Asian and Irish heritage and that I knew a number of other writers who were mixed and Irish, an idea formed. Wouldn’t it be great, we thought, to have a panel of writers of mixed/Irish heritage as one of the events at the Festival.
Well, lots of conversations, phone calls and emails later, we are doing exactly that! I approached writers from the Mixed Remixed network (thanks Heidi!) and from the VONA (Voices of Our Nation Arts) Writers network to join me for an event called: “You don’t look Irish!” A Reading And Conversation with Multiracial Writers of Irish Heritage”. It will take place on March 27th in San Francisco at the University of San Francisco – where I’m a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing.
If you are in the area (or would like to come to the area!) please come and listen to: Dylan Amaro-McIntyre, Caroline Mar, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, and Clare Ramsaran, four very different writers and join in the conversation about what Irish heritage “looks like” in the 21st Century.
Location: Maraschi Room, Fromm Hall, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street @ Parker Street (next to St. Ignatius Church), San Francisco, CA.
Cost: Free. Donations welcome.
Mixed Love Notes #11 #mixedlovenotes
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