{"id":6571,"date":"2026-05-18T19:54:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T23:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/?p=6571"},"modified":"2026-05-18T19:54:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T23:54:23","slug":"torn-reading-series-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/?p=6571","title":{"rendered":"TORN reading series: Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Darren Criss in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story<\/em>. Photo credit: Jeff Daly Photography <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Addie Tsai<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 1: Seduced Whole: Fragmentation, Asian Settler Complicity, and the Cultures of Appropriation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe mixed race portrait may satisfy a desire to be represented, a reasonable desire for anyone who has not felt seen, but it also, I argue, becomes a prime site to explore the enduring effects of America\u2019s colonial mission and imperial expansion, which are never not present even and especially within cultural objects deemed worthy of praise, purchase, and consumption.\u201d (40)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the multiracial ancestry of Andrew Cunanan, the Filipine Italian who assassinated Gianni Versace and was the subject of FX\u2019s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, \u201cprovokes an exploration into the ways racial deception functions as a backdrop to the disavowed, the denied, and the oft-forgotten elements embedded within the cultural politics of American multiracialism at the turn of the century.\u201d (41)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In considering American Crime Story<\/em> alongside Storti\u2019s analysis and explication of \u201cracial deception,\u201d I can\u2019t help but also turn my attention to the actor who embodied him, Darren Criss, also multiracial (his mother is Filipine, Spanish, and Chinese, and his father was English, German, and Irish) and seen through a lens of \u201cshapeshifting,\u201d whether intentionally or the ways media depicts multiracial Asian people as \u201cchameleons.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storti considers the complicated utopic vision of the Eurasian as the \u201canswer for racial conflict,\u201d and how they reveal the colonial project of \u201cracial purity.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions and demands for racial purity and authenticity, particularly toward those considered \u201chybrid,\u201d abound. How do we see contemporary media contend (or ignore) what lies underneath mixed Asian representation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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RSVP here for June 11 book club on TORN<\/em>.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Addie Tsai<\/strong> (any\/all) is the author of Dear Twin <\/em>(2019), included in American Library Association\u2019s Rainbow List in 2021, Unwieldy Creatures <\/em>(2022), a Shirley Jackson finalist for Best Novel, and Straight White Men Can\u2019t Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture<\/em>. She collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein<\/em> and Camille Claudel, <\/em>among others. They are the founding editor in chief for just femme & dandy<\/em>. Addie is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Creative Writing at William & Mary, where she is Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Sexuality, and Women\u2019s Studies and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Addie Tsai Chapter 1: Seduced Whole: Fragmentation, Asian Settler Complicity, and the Cultures of Appropriation \u201cThe mixed race portrait may satisfy a desire to be represented, a reasonable desire for anyone who has not felt seen, but it also, I argue, becomes a prime site to explore the enduring effects of America\u2019s colonial mission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[189,287,26,16],"class_list":["post-6571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academic","tag-anna-storti","tag-multiracial","tag-nonfiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6571"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6617,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6571\/revisions\/6617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soapberryreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}