Posted on July 18, 2006 - by Administrator

Meet the Addicted to Race intern team!

JC & CVK
We’re excited to introduce you to the five wonderful young men (okay, man) and women who are making up our 2006 Addicted to Race intern team! They’ve already done terrific work, and we’re really looking forward to working closely with them this summer. Here they are, in reverse alphabetical order by last name. (Yes, that was Carmen VAN Kerckhove’s idea. )

Shamara Wyllie
Hey everyone, my name is Shamara Wyllie. I am 20 years old. I am a third-year at Sarah Lawrence College and I will be in New York and California this summer. I am African, Jamaican, Trinidadian, American and I grew up in a majority white community. Racism has afflicted me personally since kindergarten; although the forces of evil had been at work long before I was born. Hee, hee. Anyway, I am really excited to be working with the Addicted to Race team and the New Demographic, but more importantly you, the listeners. Talk to you soon…

Alysha Wood
Alysha Wood is a writer, dancer, and daughter of a Thai immigrant from Charleston, West Virginia. She received her BA in Interdisciplinary Asian Studies, Creative Writing and Dance from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA in 2005. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Editor of Tendrel, Naropa’s Diversity Journal, she is interested in the intersections between queer and mixed race identity.

Jess Motai
Name: Jess Motai
Age: 21
School: Mount Holyoke College, MA
Major/Minor: Architectural Studies/ Women’s Studies
Interests: Traveling! I just returned from studying in Florence, Italy for 9
months
Location this summer: New York/ New Jersey area
I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan until the age of 13, when my family decided to move to New Jersey. Being biracial, but having more White physical features than Asian, made me “special” during my time in Japan, since White Americans have continuously been idealized. After my move, this view changed little, yet became more complex: now I was being asked the question “what are you?” as well. Because I was treated as a foreigner in Japan and someone whose ethnic identity is deemed ambiguous in America, I often felt and still feel marginalized. Finally in college, I was able to find a group of people whom I could relate with, and where my interest and involvement in multiracial studies and diversity issues as a whole could thrive.

Athena Mari Asklipadis
My name is Athena Mari Asklipadis, I am 22, and will be recieving my Bachelor of Arts degree in Telecommunications/News Broadcasting from Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA) at the end of this summer. I was born and raised in sunny Los Angeles, California, but hope to travel around the world. I am Japanese, Greek, Armenian, Egyptian and Italian and because of my mixed background, I have developed a interest and open mind for all cultures. My favorite color is pink, I love sushi and gyros (not at the same time) and I talk…A LOT. I love meeting new people and having discussions on race, culture and identity. I look forward to this internship and broadening my knowledge on race.

Corbin Laedlein
Corbin Laedlein is 19 years old and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is currently a sophomore at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ and is majoring in Africana Studies. At Rutgers he is involved with the Galvanizing and Organizing Youth Activism Project, which works to promote global literacy, and helps facilitate discussions at Bridging the Gap, a retreat where Rutgers students discuss issues of diversity, identity and community development. For fun he plays Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art form that incorporates music, acrobatics and dance. Corbin hopes to help Jen and Carmen change the ways our society views and talks about race as well as promote the acceptance of mixed-race identity. He also hopes to see the day when people stop asking if his hair is a perm.