Kate Ray holding Miroslov Ray in their apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 2023.
Anthony Volodkin holding Miroslov Ray in their apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 2023.
Kate Ray holding Miroslov Ray with Anthony Volodkin in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 2023.
Kate Ray posing in front of her cooking in her apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 2023:
"There’s a lot of pressure, especially in the food world, to constantly perform your cultural identity. At the same time, Anthony’s childhood comfort foods are kasha, olivye, vareniki, and mine are scallion pancakes and potstickers along with meatloaf and PB&J. How do we share these foods with our child and teach him about where he comes from without falling into American melting pot tropes?
Anthony grew up in Russia and Ukraine and came to Brooklyn in middle school, and I’m the interracial product of a Chinese-American mom who lived her whole life in the States and a white American dad who grew up in East Africa and Switzerland. My mom always cooked us the most “American” dishes like meatloaf and mac & cheese, while her mom made Chinese food and taught Chinese cooking in L.A. — even though cooking isn’t something she learned until after emigrating. I began cooking when I stopped eating meat as a teenager, so my preparation of my grandmother’s dishes signify hers in taste and nostalgia more than literal reproduction. Maybe because of all that, I have an ambivalent relationship to authenticity in dishes. I mix cuisines liberally, guided by my own palate.
We went to Ukraine in April, and Miro loved the tvorog and cabbage and even the pickled mushrooms. Ultimately we’re not trying to manage his tastes or taste memories. We will cook the things we love and hope he discovers what he loves as well."
Kate Ray's dinner spread, 2023.
Kate Ray with Anthony Volodkin holding Miroslov Ray in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 2023.
Anna Yum in her apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023.
Anna Yum in her apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023:
"being mixed race is the constant feeling of otherness. having the world decide incessantly who you are and what you bring to the table. people asking you where you are from and then again where are you really from. the lingering curious stares as people passed and saw my family, sifting a way of how we all fit together. feeling otherness on my Korean side as they hand everyone else chopsticks and me the fork. hearing my name sliced and diced around the kitchen table, the only one not speaking the mother tongue. feeling otherness on my Black side with my cousins asking why I act and talk white. that i’m not Black enough. embracing myself and the intergenerational, intersectional ties that my identities bring have felt like a battle within myself to prove to everyone that i belong and that I am here. at the age of 24 going into my 25th year, I’ve never felt more conflicted yet connected with myself from all the experience and challenges that the world has posed me. I’m constantly overlooked and when I tell people that I’m mixed they assume “oh 1/2 of this and 1/2 of that” but I’m here to say that there is no division of who I am but that I encompass all and that’s enough because it’s enough for me."
A portrait of Anna Yum in her living room in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023.
Anna Yum with her cat Kaja in Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2023.
Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty's shared apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty in their shared space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023:
"I have a complicated relationship with my family, which means I have a complicated relationship with my racial and ethnic identity. I haven’t spoken to my mother in eight years, and I didn’t just lose contact with her. I lost my connection to half of my family, my Japanese surname, and my sense of belonging in the AAPI community.
My mother’s half of the family was capital J.A., Japanese-American. Those two words held equal weight. The Cherry Blossom Festival was just as important as the 4th of July. They called Inari “footballs” and Danmuji “sweaty socks”. When the women married, they took their white husband’s surnames but gave their children middle names that could be spelled with kanji. The older members had been through internment camps in Arkansas but never talked about it. These new traditions were passed down to me, along with the precious heirlooms of upturned eyes, an oval face, and fine black hair. But when the family collectively cut me off at age 16, it felt more like I had been thrown a cheap t-shirt that read: “My Mom Abandoned Me and All I Got Was This Asian Face”.
My dad is white. He’s the recessive gene, the European splotch on ancestry.com, and the reason behind the harsh angles of my nose. If my dad came to pick me up from a playdate, people assumed I was adopted. We barely share a freckle, let alone any prominent features. So despite not speaking a single word of Japanese, nor ever going to Japan, in the 88.1% white city I spent my childhood in, I was fully Japanese. Because of this, because I was always called “Asian Maya” before “Maya”, because I was prodded with questions like “where are you really from?” or told that I looked “just like Lucy Liu”, I identify as Japanese first, white second.
Now I have two sons who are ¼ Chinese, ¼ Japanese, and ½ white. They were adopted by a Korean woman and a Scottish man (who can actually trace his lineage back to the same clan as my family). Like me, they are growing up in a majority white enclave, but they have deep roots to their heritage that are not as easily severed as mine. The oldest is learning Korean over facetime with his halmoni, and the youngest is being fitted with a hanbok for his 100th day celebration. My partner Michael and I will always be present in their lives if they want to learn more about our Chinese and Japanese cultures, respectively. Oftentimes it feels like the shared gene between half-asians is nagging self-doubt. A feeling that you don’t belong. All I can hope is that my children didn't inherit that."
Charlie Caulfield in their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty in their space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Charlie Caulfield and Michael McNulty in their shared loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Eric Yang in Charlie's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Eric Yang and Charlie Gillette at Charlie's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023:
"We met acting in a film together, playing boyfriend and girlfriend in a short called 'Ttal'. The film is about navigating the cultural and generational gaps that exist when you're in an interracial relationship. Many aspects of the film came true in our real lives once we started dating. Eric grew up partially in the US and partially in China and I grew up in a multicultural household with my dad's side of the family being Chilean and my mom's side being mostly German. Both of us speak multiple languages and have experienced life in other countries. While we have a lot of differences, we've found they actually serve as points of connection and shared experience as well. I think we both share a love of new experiences and a curiosity about the world that comes from having that kind of upbringing. I was born in Germany and spent the first three years of my life there before moving to Miami where my dad's siblings and parents lived. Miami is so multicultural and family gatherings would be half in English and half in Spanish. After my family moved to upstate New York when I was 10, I began to grapple with my identity, where my Latina roots often went unnoticed or misunderstood because of the way I look. For years, I silenced this part of me. Now, my work is driven by a commitment to explore and express the diverse narratives that have sculpted me, using my voice and my craft to weave together the threads of my identity into a narrative that speaks of unity in diversity."
Charlie Gillette in her apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Eric Yang and Charlie Gillette at Charlie's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2023.
Acudus Aranyian in their shared space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.
Acudus Aranyian and Colum Bowyer in their shared space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.
Colum Bowyer in their shared space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.
Colum Bowyer braiding Acudus Aranyian's rat tail in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.
Colum Bowyer and Acudus Aranyian posing on top of their bedroom in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 2023.