Mia Mercado Keeps It Real
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Mia Mercado’s “Weird, But Normal”
Ultimately, she “explores the contradictions of being a millennial woman—which usually means being kind of a weirdo—” by sharing “the awkward, uncomfortable, surprisingly ordinary parts of life, and shows us why it's strange to feel fine and fine to feel strange.”
Mercado, whose father is Filipino and mother is white, was actually an “overly-nervous, serious rule-follower” when she was growing up, as she has mentioned in previous interviews. Finding her comedic voice was partly due to not knowing what to do as she was approaching graduation from college.
Serious
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she studied Creative Writing at University of Wisconsin where she claims to have written “a lot of very bad short stories.” The semester before she graduated, she searched online for “creative writing jobs” because she didn’t know what to do with her degree.
Fortunately for her future career, she was able to find work as an editor for a greeting card company. It was while working on humor cards that she was reminded that “people do not think about serious things all the time” and when she realized she could write about “real things in a funny way” in longer forms, beyond greeting cards.
Since then, her work has been published in outlets such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Washington Posts' The Lily, New York Magazine's The Cut, Bustle, McSweeney's, Gizmodo, The Hairpin, among others.
Mia Mercado (Photo by Chase Castor)
Approachable
Rather than specifically tackling a subject matter or responding to an issue, ideas for Mercado’s essays come to her during mundane everyday settings and activities such as when she’s getting her oil changed.
Which does not mean she avoids heavy or serious topics. She points out that she appreciates “comedy that addresses big, heavy, confusing things in a way that feels approachable and makes me think about it in a new way.”
She develops ideas from a note file in her phone where she jots down her observations and phrase fragments.
When it comes to writing tone, she tries to emulate conversational writing where it feels like the piece is “talking to you and not down to you.”
For current comedic and humor influences that she has been reading or watching, she “will read anything by [Filipino American essayist] Jia Tolentino.” She also enjoys television shows “PEN15” and “Bob’s Burgers.”
Mia Mercado promoting her book on Instagram
Personal
While the pieces in the book may take a lighthearted view of the world we live in, Mercado anchors them in experiences that are very real, intimate, nuanced, and personal.
For example, Mercado discusses mental health conditions such as depression as well as experiences connected to her family, including her relationship with her mother and her older sibling’s Down Syndrome.
She also notes that several of her personal essays are specifically about “feeling ‘othered’ as a biracial person in an extremely white Midwestern suburb.”
To wit, the collection includes a piece previously published online on “how white people throughout my life have felt the need to confess their white guilt to me like I’m an ordained minister in the church of Absolving Your Implicit Racism.
“It's also about how people of color are often expected, usually by white people, to be the spokesperson for all nonwhite people. All of those things are just...incorrect.”
Nevertheless, Mercado adds, “In the same way that I don't walk through life with ‘Hello it is me, one biracial person, coming through.’ at the forefront of my mind, they aren't the focus for most of the pieces.
“But it's definitely something that both explicitly and implicitly informs my experiences, how I see the world, and how the world sees me.”
However the world sees her through her pieces, Mercado’s writing follows an underlying goal. In a recent podcast interview, she stated that while humor can’t save a democracy or cure a pandemic, it can be a way to “talk about bigger, scarier things in a way that is accessible to more people…so that it doesn’t feel so heavy.
“There are so many things that are happening right now…that [can] weigh you down. Anytime that someone can bring levity…while still acknowledging it, not making light of it, and have it feel true—that’s the goal.”
In the meantime, Mercado is in Kansas City, working on her freelance writing and self-control while eating chips.
Walter Ang
Walter Ang is the author of Barangay to Broadway: Filipino American Theater History. When he is not writing about Fil-Am theater, he delves into astrology and yoga. Visit http://amazon.com/author/walterang
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