Time to the meet the latest Angry Reader of the Week, spotlighting you, the very special readers of this website. Over the years, I've been able to connect with a lot of cool folks, and this is a way of showing some appreciation and attention to the people who help make this blog what it is. Say hello to blogger/work-at-home-dad Jason Sperber.
Who are you?
Jason Lawrence Sperber, husband and partner of Michelle, father of Lucy Rose (4-and-a-half years) and Emi Hope (2-and-a-half months), son of Helen and Jeff, grandson of Satsuko and Koichi and Carolyn and Jerry.
What are you?
The question of my life. How much space/time you got? The second and third sections of Maria Root's Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage are a good explainer for why that isn't a simple question. But for right now, let's say I'm a biracial Japanese Jewish American and multiracial Asian American, and that I can't really extricate the parts of me that are father, writer, educator, and activist from any self-definition either.
Where are you?
In Bakersfield, California, at the southern end of the Central Valley and worlds away from my hometown, Los Angeles (though only two hours away over the mountains). More specifically, at my computer in my "home office"/living room, where I get to telecommute part-time as a work-at-home-dad (WAHD).
Where are you from?
Short answer: LA, baby, born and raised. And I mean LA LA, not the suburbs. Mid-Wilshire, that nebulous "neighborhood" defined by what it's next to -- south of Hancock Park, east of Miracle Mile, north of Crenshaw and Mid-City, west of Koreatown, but infringing on and intermingling with all of them. Long answer: see answers to "who are you" and "what are you" above.
What do you do?
I was a former high school social studies teacher when we had our first child and I became a stay-at-home-dad (SAHD). I started blogging about the various intersections of life, parenting, fatherhood, family, race, and culture while I was home full-time with Lucy for 2 years, on my own blog, daddyinastrangeland.com, at the group blog by Asian American dads that I co-founded with Oliver Wang, ricedaddies.com, and at antiracistparent.com (part of Carmen Van Kerckhove's New Demographic family of sites). Blogging about what I care about led to my current job as the online community manager for the website of our local newspaper. I was full-time in the office for over 2 years, but now with the birth of our new arrival, Emi, I'm back at home as a work-at-home-dad, working part-time so that I can be with and care for our youngest.
What are you all about?
I was always attracted to the idea that whatever I was able to accomplish was because of those who came before me and the work that they did, and that whatever I did today was for those who would come after. But becoming a father made those ideas more real, more concrete, and more important than they ever had been to an idealistic ethnic studies student with little life experience. Everything is interconnected, everything is about family, and "family" means so much more than who you're related to and accidents of birth.
What makes you angry?
That some people think that any progress made against any -ism is proof that said -ism doesn't exist anymore and thus doesn't have to be fought against and that if you don't agree with them, then you're the one with the problem. That some people still don't understand or care that systems of oppression and injustice are interconnected, and that you can't fight one without fighting them all. That there are families in this country without healthcare. That our education system is so screwed up and failing so many. That no matter how hard I fight, or my wife fights, or our entire generation fights, our daughters, and their daughters, will still have fights on their hands, and messes to clean up not of their own making.