Publisher: W.W. NortonGlobally, the number of multiracial people is exploding. The United States alone currently counts at least seven million multiracial inhabitants. By the year 2050 more than one in five Americans will be claiming mixed ancestry. Yet it was only as recently as 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau began to allow citizens to check off as many racial categories as are applicable—White, African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, American Indian and Alaska Native. Previously, Americans were allowed to check off only one, leaving multiracial people invisible and unaccounted for.
Fortunately, a greater awareness of multiracial people is underway. Dozens of web sites devoted to multiracial issues have sprung up across the Internet, and novels and memoirs on the topic have proliferated. In Mixed Chandra Prasad has created the first anthology of its kind, bringing together eighteen stories by both new and noted writers about the experience of coming from a multiracial background.
With contributors such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Cristina Garcia, Peter Ho Davies, and Mat Johnson, and an illuminating introduction by Rebecca Walker, Mixed gives voice to the multiple identities of the rising generation. It also provides some of the most fresh, engaging, and vital original literary fiction in recent memory.
Praise for Mixed
"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
“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
"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
"This luminous, eclectic collection is a must-read for anyone interested in what it means to be multiracial today."
-Meredith Broussard, editor of The Dictionary of Failed Relationships
"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
"Compelling and revealing....The considerable breadth of contributors' backgrounds and subjects is a strength of the collection, as are the personal comments that follow each story. The writers'--and characters'--unique combinations reflect the complex racial and ethnic reality of the United States today."
-Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Editor-in-Chief, MultiCultural Review