I became conscious pretty early, because I grew up in Covina, about a half hour from here. And my family, besides my father who’s English/Irish descent from New York, my family is entirely Chinese, from China. My brother and my sisters are all full-blooded Chinese from China, as are all of my cousins, so I was the only Hapa kid in the entire family. So to me I was always the white kid, I was like the one American kid who didn’t speak Chinese and so forth.
And I think when I was five years old I went to kindergarten for the first day and this was at the time a really white area. And to come in and realize, like, “Whoa, you’re not fitting in here at all, you’re like the only brown kid in the whole school.” That’s when I realized that these things really make a big difference to people.
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.
Interviewee Bio
Kip Fulbeck was born in 1965 to a Chinese mother and English/Irish father. At age five, he was told by his full-blooded Chinese cousins that he was Hapa. He never gave much thought to the term as a child. As he grew older, faced with the dearth of knowledge relating to mixed-race identity (or worse, the negative connotations associated with it), he began thinking about ways to promote a more realistic and human portrayal of Hapa identity.
Fulbeck chose to explore this issue by creating the Hapa Project as a forum for Hapa to answer the question “What are you?” in their own words and be photographed in simple head-on portraits. He has now photographed over 1000 people from all ages and walks of life. The project is now a book, Part Asian, 100% Hapa (Chronicle Books, 2006) and an exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum from June 8 through October 29, 2006 titled kip fulbeck: part asian, 100% hapa.
Kip Fulbeck has been making films and art about Hapa identity since 1990. Known as the nation's leading artist on the identity, multiracial/ethnicity, and art and pop culture, he has spoken and exhibited his award-winning films, performance, and photography throughout the world. Fulbeck is currently Professor and Chair of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a three-time recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Member Award and also an affiliate faculty member in Asian American Studies and Film Studies. (May 3, 2006)