Checking the Box: A Journey Through My Hybrid Identity

Abstract

“Checking the Box: A Journey Through My Hybrid Identity” is a performance piece, examining the social construction of ethnic identity and the sociopolitical processes that are brought to bear on self-definition and group identification. Deploying autoethnography, this multivocal text explores the historical conditions and political and economic exigencies that have shaped my experience of hybridity—as a multiethnic individual, negotiating my identity in contemporary U.S. society. I map my journey, through competing discourses, histories, and media-generated memories, arriving back at the beginning. Ultimately, the piece seeks to highlight the strategic logic employed by those caught “between” dominant representations and capture the experience of navigating that terrain.