Dmae Roberts

“I have to say though it’s made it easier for white people to seek me out because I am half-white to ask me what they would be afraid to ask a mono-racial Asian American. I generally have intriguing, sometimes difficult, conversations with people about race…”

“While I’m proud to take risks artistically in my work, at the same time, I’ve had older generations of Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans who have chastised me for peddling (a phrase I hate) “pain-porn” because I have told my mom’s war-torn story. What a hurtful thing to say to someone who is speaking from the heart and basically laying out the facts of a person’s life. I’ve also had white Americans shaking their fingers at me saying “You’re a bad daughter!”…”

“In any professional setting, I’m a fish out of water on many levels, not just racially and culturally but also in the work I do, which involves many artistic disciplines…”

“I’m the most peaceful when I go to Hawaii because I fit in there as a biracial or “hapa” person. No one there questions my Asian-ness, and in fact, I feel my ethnicity is embraced and accepted…”