KQED’s Mixed-Race Podcast Takes Center Stage in Live Event

Mixed Asian Media - November 16, 2023

By Lauren Lola

Photos by/Courtesy of Carolyn Sideco

Mixed!: Stories from Mixed Race Californians is a podcast series put on by Sasha Khokha and Marisa Lagos of KQED (the NPR and PBS station serving the San Francisco Bay Area), where they sit down and talk with a wide variety of folks on their experiences with navigating mixed-race identity. From speaking with psychologist Dr. Jenn Noble on tips to raising strong multiracial kids, to interviewing husband-and-wife filmmakers W. Kamau and Melissa Bell on the making of their documentary, 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed, the hosts have shown through their conversations with others the wide spectrum of what it means to be mixed-race, even in a place as racially diverse as California.

Khokha and Lago recently hosted a live event of the same name. Held on the evening of November 9th from the KQED headquarters in San Francisco, the hosts brought together conversation, multimedia storytelling, and the performing arts to exemplify a lot of what has been discussed and touched on throughout the course of their series.

As someone who was tuning in to the event virtually that Thursday evening, there was a part of me that wished to have been able to attend in person. When you’ve been in this space for as long as I have, it gets redundant with the ongoing conversations about not feeling like you belong anywhere, never feeling enough of any part of your mixed experience, etc. But I’m not saying that these discussions shouldn’t continue. In fact, the stories featured at this event were presented in a way that felt gratifying, validating, and as an educational experience, without being preachy.

Cheyenne Bearfoot, the host of the new PBS New Mexico series, Sovereign Innovations, spoke of the unbelievable crossing of paths when her Native father met her white mother. She spoke of the intergenerational trauma she has wrestled with and how hard it can be to separate her pride in her Indigenous heritage from her father, who was abusive to her growing up. That, combined with never seeing good Indigenous representation in the media, is more or less what led to her identifying as just white throughout her teenage years, before reconnecting with that side of her heritage later in college.

For me at least, it’s so rare to hear about the mixed experiences of those who are Indigenous. Seeing Bearfoot share her story through family photos and video clips helped shine a light on just one example. To be mixed is not a monolith, and yet even in the different experiences she described, she did so in a way that was relatable for others — whether Indigenous or not.

The same could be said of Megan Lowe, who used video, song, dance, and oral storytelling to share her experience as a woman who is both white and Chinese. She talked of the journey of pride, embarrassment, and eventual reconciliation she had for her first tattoo; an image of a lotus paired with a Chinese character that, more often than not, translates to “and.” Through a dance using her late grandmother’s chair, she exemplified her belief that dance is a way of communicating without words.

The word “and” is one that Dr. Jenn is actually encouraging both mixed-race and non-mixed folks to use more often when describing one’s experiences, as opposed to words like “half” and “only.” As she went on to explain, such words can make one feel less than, and replacing them with “and” also defies society’s habit of categorizing and compartmentalizing.

For adults such as myself where race wasn’t really talked about growing up, for a while, I was confused about where I fit in, and in retrospect, I know that it would have helped a great deal if my parents had talked to me about it sooner. That is why Dr. Jenn also recommends that parents of mixed-race children should start that conversation early, and educate themselves as much as possible about the mixed experience, in order to be prepared.

Signs that such advice is already being taken in stride by parents who are currently raising their mixed-race children is shown through Kamau and Melissa, as they took to the stage to talk more about the making of 1000% Me. As it turned out, they didn’t know what it would be initially, and that a lot of the filming was really a test shoot to see what they could get. As far as raising their own kids goes, they explained how they keep an open forum to where their kids can come and talk to them about whatever they’re experiencing.

Khokha and Lagos did a phenomenal job in not just spotlighting other people’s experiences, but also making space to share their own. For Khokha, her early potential as a journalist and ability to translate between both sides of her family made way for her skill level in looking at something in multiple ways, and understanding when to take up space and when to make space for others who don’t share the same privileges. For Lagos, she talked at length about how food served as a bridge for her heritage, particularly through her grandmother’s cooking, and how despite her Mexican grandfather being very detached from his heritage, she learned that she doesn’t need permission to claim what is already hers. Very often when tuning in for an interview series, so much focus is on the interviewee. Turning the focus on themselves for a moment allowed the audience to know the interviewers a bit better, too.

It was an incredible evening of thoughtful dialogues about the mixed-race experience put on by KQED. Every single one of the participants took what’s been constantly talked about in these spaces to another place in their own unique ways, and in doing so, created space for the audience — whether mixed-race or not — to find ways to relate and connect.

Lauren Lola is an author, freelance writer, playwright, and screenwriter from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of the novels, An Absolute Mind and A Moment’s Worth, as well as the graphic novel, Dasig. She has written plays that have been produced both virtually and in-person for theatre groups on the West Coast of the United States, and has penned the short films, “Breath of Writing” and “Interview with an Aswang.” Aside from Mixed Asian Media, Lauren has also had writing featured on The Nerds of Color, CAAMedia, PBS, YOMYOMF, and other outlets and publications.

You can find Lauren on Instagram @akolaurenlola and on her website, www.lolabythebay.wordpress.com.