A volume in Research for Social Justice: Personal Passionate
Participatory Inquiry Series Editors: Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern
University and JoAnn Phillion, Purdue University In Are You Mixed?,
Sonia Janis explores the spaces in-between race and place from the
perspective of an educator who is multi-racial. As she reflects on her
own experiences as a seventh grade student up to her eventual
appointment as a school administrator, she learns of the complexity of
situating oneself in predetermined demographic categories. She shares
how she explores the intricacies of undefined spaces that teach her to
embrace differences, contradictions, and complexities in schools,
neighborhoods and communities. Exploring the in-betweenness (Anzaldua &
Keating, 2002; He, 2003, 2010) of her life as a multi-race person
problematizes imbedded notions of race, gender, class, and power. The
power of this memoir lies in its narrative possibilities to capture the
contradictions and paradoxes of lives in-between race and place, "to
honor the subtleties, fluidities, and complexities of such experience,
and to cultivate understanding towards individual ... experience and the
multicultural/multiracial contexts that shape and are shaped by such
experience" (He, 2003, p. xvii). This memoir creates new ways to think
about and write about in-between experience and their relevance to
multicultural and multiracial education. Janis challenges educators,
teachers, administrators, and policy makers to view the educational
experience of students with multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual
backgrounds by shattering predetermined categories and stereotyped
classifications and looking into unknown and fluid realms of the
in-betweenness of their lives. This challenge helps create equitable and
just opportunities and engender culturally responsive and inspiring
curricular and learning environments to bring out the best potential in
all diverse schools, communities, neighborhoods, tribes and societies.
