By Chandra Crane & Katie Nguyen
Chandra Crane’s book, Mixed Blessing: Embracing the Fullness of Your Multiethnic Identity, released in December of 2020. As AACC continues to journey through our “It’s Complicated” series, Chandra Crane and Katie Nguyen both share their thoughts and reflections on the relevance of this book now one a half years later as the writer and new readers continue to engage with not only her book diving into exploring Mixed identity.
Chandra’s Reflections
It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year-and-a-half since Mixed Blessing first made its way into the world! Writing, publishing, and promoting a book has been exhausting, but also very joyful as I’ve been able to connect with folks from around the world who are multiethnic, multicultural, and who are monoethnic allies.
Releasing a book during a pandemic is also uniquely taxing. In addition to the global sense of fear, grief, and uncertainty, I felt a sense of loss as I wasn’t able to connect with people in person. No local launch party, no bookstore or library readings, no chance to meet new folks face-to-face.
But if necessity is the mother of invention, then quarantine is the auntie of flexibility, and I was able to use technology and creativity to connect with readers. Because I have to remind myself, that was why I wrote this book in the first place. To share the stories that I’ve been entrusted with and to help foster space for others to share their stories.
A year and a half ago, people congratulated me on “birthing” the book. While I do feel like it was a labor of love, I also felt more like a nurse-midwife and an auntie than a mother. I held the book lightly in my hands (and still do), knowing that it is not mine, but ours. So as I think about Mixed Blessing now metaphorically toddling through the world, I feel a great joy in knowing that it continues to bless readers both new and old.
If I had to choose one thing I’ve learned anew in this process (or two, as I reject false dichotomies!), it’s that God has plans for us…plans that are sometimes very different from our own goals and strategies. When prayer and grace lead us to a place where our plans overlap with the Lord’s, that is a very sweet spot indeed.
I still feel that the book is a gift and a blessing. It was a gift and a blessing to me to hear the stories I included within its pages, and it’s a gift and blessing to hear how those stories have encouraged others. As I think about the book continuing to be shared with others, I feel a great comfort in knowing that ultimately, it’s God’s book, and his stories that he is telling through people. May we all have ears to listen to his good story wherever we encounter it!
Katie’s Reflections
Within the last year, I began implementing a new hashtag into some of my posts and everyday vernacular: #MixedMagic. To some, it may seem silly, while others may simply appreciate the alliteration. For me, this phrase serves as an important marker of a specific journey I’ve been on in the last few years of engaging the work to reclaim the gift of my Mixed Vietnamese/White identity and how that part of my identity not only informs my faith, but further fans it into flame.
When I learned sometime in mid-2020 that Chandra’s book was coming out, in the midst of a world scrambling to come to grips with a pandemic, racially driven murders, and what I can only call a reckoning within the American Evangelical church, I pre-ordered Mixed Blessing immediately. 2020 is when my search specifically for language to describe my Mixed identity and faith was kicked into gear, so the timeliness of Mixed Blessing couldn’t have been better.
I’m also a serial book reader: If I don’t sit down and read a book in one sitting, I will inevitably jump sporadically between four other books before I manage to go back to finish that one. Not to mention, in the midst of 2020, I was walking through my own reckoning dealing with the slow marathon of leaving work at a White Evangelical megachurch while also juggling running a “healthy” (whatever that meant in 2020) youth ministry in a pandemic and working to finish an M.A. in Christian Leadership. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t able to make time for any personal reading until 2022, which is when I finally had the joy of reading Mixed Blessing.
Reading Mixed Blessing now is perhaps even more of a blessing than it would have been if I had cracked its pages when it was first launched…as the Church is beginning to emerge out of a time of the Lord leaving no stone, theology, or assumption unshaken, the conversations that remain (which I pray are not stamped out by fear or out of a desire to remain comfortable) are ones that can all benefit from a widened and more nuanced perspective.
The beauty of Mixed Blessing is found in the way Chandra provides language and empowerment for our Mixed brothers and sisters in Christ. In a world that prefers to discard what confuses us rather than lean in, and historically has no categories for those of us with Mixed identity, Mixed Blessing serves as a guide to Mixed daughters and sons of the King of Kings of exploring with Christ how we are uniquely created, positioned, and equipped by the Lord to bring healing, reconciliation, and truth to the world around us.
This book now, in 2022, and for years to come will continue to serve as an important tool in helping to fan into flame the power of #MixedMagic. Whether that’s through empowering our Mixed siblings to engage in our confusing, multifaceted, beautiful stories or in helping monoethnic majority and minority culture siblings begin to engage the world with imagination informed by a Kingdom more diverse than any of us could ever begin to comprehend. To my Mixed brothers and sisters: The Kingdom is here, and we have a role to play in ushering in the Lord’s grace, justice, and healing.
Photo by Nguyen Thu Hoai on Unsplash
Chandra Crane (B.S. Education, M.A. Ministry) is a Multiethnic Initiatives Resource Specialist with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and a member of the multiethnic Redeemer Church in Jackson, Mississippi. Growing up in a multiethnic/multicultural family in the Southwest and now happily transplanted to the Deep South, Chandra is passionate about diversity and family. She is married to Kennan, a civil engineer, and they have two spunky daughters. Chandra is a fan of hot tea, crossword puzzles, Converse shoes, and science fiction. She thoroughly enjoys reading, napping, and defying stereotypes.
Katie is a Mixed Vietnamese/White pastor, writer, and speaker in Austin, TX. She serves as the Marketing/Communications Coordinator, an Editor, & is on the podcast team for AACC. She completed her M.A. in Christian Leadership at Dallas Theological Seminary and earned her B.A. in English with teacher certification from Texas State University. She is engaged in the work to care for the historically unseen and marginalized in the city of Austin, consumes books like they’re chips, can often be found by the nearest body of water, and loves a good cup of coffee and conversation!