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Mixed
An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience
“For those of us who are mixed, the question ‘what are you?’ is never simple. The stories in this groundbreaking anthology remind us that the answers are also never uninteresting. Nuanced, thoughtful, and deeply human, MIXED will appeal to anyone for whom the idea of ‘homeland’ is less a place than a state of mind.”
Bliss Broyard, author of My Father, Dancing
“You may not have heard of some of these writers--but one day soon you will. In the meantime, don’t miss this chance to read their sometimes painful but always exhilarating fiction. With great skill, these stories convey the shades of gray--or black, yellow and brown--that get lost amid easy labels.”
Paul Zakrzewski, editor of Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge
“Mixed is a well conceived anthology with stories that are compelling and revealing…. The writers’--and characters’--unique combinations reflect the complex racial and ethnic reality of the United States today. Along with acclaimed authors are talented newcomers whose artistic visions embody the eloquence of a new rainbow generation.”
Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Editor-in-Chief, MultiCultural Review and of Global Voices, Global Visions: A Core Collection of Multicultural Books
“The multiracial characters in Mixed, who inhabit worlds as diverse as a Los Angeles suburb, an Indian reservation in Wyoming, a Vietnamese village, and the streets of Queens, New York, emerge as refreshingly complex and compelling.”
Pearl Fuyo Gaskins, author of What Are You?: Voices of Mixed-Race Young People
“If hybrid vigor can be claimed, then MIXED is Exhibit A! These stories ‘slip the yoke and change the joke’ on race and identity and belonging in the best Ellisonian sense, and give new complexity, while shedding light, on an already impossibly complex discussion. I wish I had grown up on these stories. Luckily, I have them to share with my son.
Catherine McKinley, The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts
America has always prided itself on being a melting-pot, a country where people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds live together, interact, and intermarry. While we frequently make a show of celebrating diversity, all too often the implications and issues of belonging and identity surrounding America’s vast multiracial population are ignored. In MIXED(W.W. Norton and Company, $15.95 paper, August 14, 2006), editor Chandra Prasad opens up this dialogue, bringing together eighteen stories by both new and noted writers about the experience of coming from a multiracial background.
Contributors, including Danzy Senna, Cristina Garcia and Ruth Ozeki – all of whom come from blended families – give voice to the multiple identities of a rising generation. In “My Elizabeth” by Diana Abu-Jaber, a young Palestinian girl moves to live with her aunt on an American Indian reservation, where she meets Elizabeth. Although the girls are from different cultural backgrounds, they share a sense of displacement that bonds them together in a profound, sometimes painful, friendship. In Neela Vaswani’s “Bing-Chen,” a young man of Chinese and Anglo-Saxon descent goes from a simple haircut to reevaluating his sense of identity. In “Minotaur,” Peter Ho Davies’s uses a more fantastical metaphor to express his feelings on the multiracial experience: he gets inside the head of a modern minotaur, half-man, half-bull and very much a teen, confined to a labyrinth of impossible decisions. The protagonist of Lucinda Roy’s “Effigies” is a powerful African-American academic whose world is shaken and sense of self is all but destroyed when his white, Irish mother comes back into his life, a ghost from his past leaving him with unsettling questions and doubts about his roots. The selections in MIXED are followed by notes from the authors, giving insights into how they came to write their stories.
The fiction in MIXED is fresh, engaging, vital, and above all exciting. It miraculously performs a seemingly impossible feat: imparting a sense of unity and togetherness while confronting the tumultuous cultural territory of multiplicity.
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
Chandra Prasad, a graduate of YaleUniversity, is a freelance writer and editor living in Connecticut. The author of Outwitting the Job Market, she has written extensively on diversity and the workplace. Her novel, On Borrowed Wings, will be published by Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2007.
TITLE: Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience
EDITOR: Chandra Prasad
PUBLICATION DATE: August 14, 2006
PRICE: $15.95 trade paper
ISBN: 0-393-32786-8