Being Mixed-Race Series

Episode 14: Disability Inclusion, Intersectionality, and Activism

Much of the already small disability representation in the media focuses on white people, and often men. Although we would never know it from TV and movies, the CDC reports that 19.67% of people of color have a disability compared with 20% of white people. In many spaces, people with disabilities aren’t welcome regardless of race, often unintentionally. Mia Ives-Rublee, a transracial adoptee and the founder and coordinator for the Women’s March Disability Caucus, is working to change the norm. […]

Ep. 2: Mireya S. Vela's Vestiges of Courage
Interviews

Episode 2: Mireya S. Vela’s Vestiges of Courage

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? Mireya S. Vela is that woman. In this long-form interview, we discuss her art, creative nonfiction, social justice, motherhood, womanhood, being marginalized in the United States, and her new book, Vestiges of Courage: Collected Essays, which we, The Nasiona, are happy to be publishing in April of 2019.Vestiges of Courage is a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Raised between two cultures and two languages, Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing, confusing, and hopeless. She delineates her experience of living through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. This book is much more than a collection of experiences, though. Ms. Vela wants to know how and why abuse thrived in her family. She digs deep to understand why these things happened and how she survived. […]

Egypt, "Fragment of a Queen's Face," yellow jasper, Dynasty 18, New Kingdom, Amarna Period, reign of Akhenaten, ca. 1353-1336 B.C., The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Womanhood & Trauma Series — "Give Us a Smile"

Open Season

Blending styles including personal memoir, creative nonfiction, and photography, “Open Season” lyrically explores what it means to be a woman in America. The vignettes present flashes of microaggressions that women suffer and internalize every day, […]