Gen Slosberg: Pioneer for Jews of Color

Hapa Mag - MARCH 10, 2021

By Stephanie Mieko Cohen

In October 2020, Alex and I had the honor of joining LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film Project, a group of Asian American Jews that met virtually to speak on their mixed stories. I spoke with Gen Slosberg, one of the co-creators of LUNAR, where we dove into her upbringing in China and what being an Asian Jew has meant to her.

You were born and raised in China until you were 15 years old. Do you have a lot of memories growing up as a mixed kid? Did you have any other mixed friends?

I knew a few other mixed kids, none of them were [also] American. The other mixed kids I knew were Chinese and Ecuadorian and Chinese and German. There was another girl in my class, but I don’t think she was treated as weirdly as I was. She was very much embraced, welcomed, and popular. I don’t know her full story, but I don’t think she faced the same struggles I did. My school was a bilingual school, [mostly] upper-middle class Chinese families, Korean families, and mixed families. I stood out in a lot of ways. I was a gifted child, I excelled in school, I was taller than the other kids. [It was kinda] like I was being paraded around. I was a child model — I was invited to act in a TV show after a modeling contest. Because of all these factors, I already had all these reasons to stick out, and my whiteness amplified that. So, I was always excluded and bullied for being different. I also was a loud kid, had a lot of opinions, and in many ways did not conform to Chinese cultural expectations. No matter how good my Chinese was or however many cultural signals I could give, I was always seen as a foreigner. I knew I didn’t belong.

That must have been challenging. Did you find yourself embracing being different or was it even more isolating at the time?

The vocabulary around describing my experience in China as a function of my mixed identity didn’t really come until I came to the United States. There is more of a discourse and language around race and ethnic identity here. In China, because most, if not everyone, are the same anyway, we don’t talk about ethnicity or race. It’s kind of an assumption that everyone is the same… As a young teen, I knew I objected to that and that I wanted to have my own opinions, but I didn’t fully understand how being mixed and my identity was interlaced in that until I got the language to talk about it.

I was just going to say you were probably too young to fully understand what was going on.

I mean, I think I understood that I was being perceived as entirely different than how I perceived myself and that people were fetishizing me and sexualizing me in ways that felt uncomfortable. At age 13 randomly on the subway, dudes would come up to me and say, “I want to date a mixed girl.” I heard my first boyfriend at 14 years old say, “I want to be with her because she’s mixed, and she’s pretty that way.” People made a big deal out of how I looked. It was a lot of colorism and light-skinned privilege. I didn’t have the analysis. I felt bad about it. I was really depressed growing up. Eight out of ten days were bad days. Friendships felt ingenuine because I didn’t know if people were using me. [In China in the early 2000s] there was a lot of sort of America worshipping going on, so I never really knew if people wanted to be friends with me for me or for the status that having an American friend gave them, so it was hard for me to form genuine relationships. It was a mixture of admiration and xenophobia. It wasn’t until I came here that I had the space to process it, talk about it, and overcome it.

High school years in the U.S. came with increased happiness and the freedom to do and be what you wanted for the first time. You then attended University of California Berkeley (congratulations on graduating in December 2020!) Talk to me about rediscovering your Judaism while at college.

Being raised almost entirely Chinese, I felt very removed from American culture and, much more so, my Jewish identity. I didn’t grow up Jewish at all. In China, there isn’t that infrastructure — i.e. Hebrew school, summer camp, youth program, BBYO... Up until I was 19 years old, when people would ask if I was Jewish, I would awkwardly reply, “...my dad is Jewish.” Freshman year, second semester, a girl from Hillel approached me in class and took me out to coffee. I think she realized I needed this more than I did at the time, and she connected me with my mentor, Matt. By Matt existing and being a leader, he helped dispel my ideas that Jews were all white… that I could actually be Jewish and could connect with, learn, and discover more about my heritage. He introduced me to a whole world of Jews of Color. He invited me to the Jews of Color Bay Area Facebook group and invited me out to Shabbat dinners. I suddenly had so much access.

Feeling very little Jewish presence in your childhood to now working as a Jewish leader at your current job is pretty remarkable. Where do you work?

I work as the Program Manager for Jewish Youth for Community Action, a youth-led, social justice organization creating change and impact in the Bay Area. JYCA teaches youths about social justice through peer-led popular education. I specifically lead Jews Against Marginalization, a youth program for Jews of Color and Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, those that have been culturally, racially, and ethnically marginalized within the Jewish community.. I got started in July 2020, around the same time as the George Floyd murder and massive uprisings in this country. I have always been deeply committed to racial justice, both in a Jewish and non-Jewish context. I was involved in the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2016, I was an organizer of Mixed at Berkeley, and was an active member of both the JOC Bay Area community and JOC community at UC Berkeley. After the protests, it really made me think, “Am I doing enough?” So, it really felt like the right moment for me to join the Jewish community in a deeper way, and invest in the future of Jews of Color.

What is the inspiration behind LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film Project?

I met Jenni (the other Co-Creator of LUNAR) after seeing her in a Jubilee Media video that was widely circulated among Facebook mixed race groups. Jenni discussed being Chinese and Jewish, and I was really yearning to meet other Chinese Jews like her. In April 2020, I messaged her, and we organized a group of us plus three others and recorded our conversations on video. The entire genesis of LUNAR was through interpersonal and social media outreach, so it’s pretty cool that Jenni and I also met that way.

LUNAR: The Jewish-Asian Film Project is a film series and community celebrating the stories of Asian American Jews. Topics range from food, cultural values, community, stereotypes, the media, and more. Check out the latest episodes on the LUNAR Youtube channel, Facebook page, and Instagram @asian.jews. Thank you, Gen!