MIXED!: Author Cherríe Moraga on Her ‘Mixed Blood’ Chicana Heritage and Embracing Discomfort

Half-and-half. Cream and coffee. Almost every mixed-race family develops their own, sometimes bizarre, metaphors to explain their kids to the outside world. Chicana feminist, playwright, poet and author Cherríe Moraga prefers the term “mixed blood.” Her recent memoir, Native Country of the Heart, is a tribute to her powerful and complicated Mexican mother, Elvira Moraga. It’s a more seasoned reflection on the concepts she first explored when she co-edited the groundbreaking anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color in 1981. Her essay “La Güera” focuses on straddling identities as a mixed-race queer woman who’s light-skinned — or güera in Spanish. Moraga says people sometimes perceive her as white, despite her deep ties to her Mexican culture and heritage. In the essay, she explores the privilege she experiences in the world because of her phenotype, but also her vulnerability as a working-class woman and as a lesbian. California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha and KQED correspondent Marisa Lagos spoke to her at her home for the series “Mixed: Stories of Mixed-Race Californians.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices