With this collection, Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny and Christina Gomez have done a significant service for anyone interested in an exploration of the complexity of issues facing multiracial persons. The 12 essays—six by women, six by men—written by students at Dartmouth College over the course of a 10-week academic term provide an intimate first-person and appropriately diverse look at the multiple forces impacting the process of developing a multiracial identity.
The book is organized in three major sections following a 16-page introduction. In addition to describing the book’s three-part framework, the introduction serves as a brief primer on: (1) terminology: ‘multiracial’ as ‘people who are of two or more racial heritages’ (p. 2), from Maria Root’s foundational work; (2) contemporary multiracial demographics in the US (e.g. in the 2000 Census people for the first time were permitted to check two or more racial categories instead of just one; by 2050 some estimate that 20% of the US population will check more than one category); and (3) the potent confluence of race, class, gender, racism and white privilege in the culture at large. For readers who may wish to apply the authors’ work to their own teaching or practice, the preface of the book may also be of practical value. It includes more than two pages of guiding questions for the authors’ respondents.
The three major sections of the book, each containing four life history essays, are sequenced in what seems a developmental format, with more nuanced, higher-order consideration of issues evident in the students’ essays in the second and then third sections. In each essay, however, the authors refer to these young adults ‘negotiating their identity’ as a vital, ongoing life process.
The essays in Part I: Who Am I? emphasize the students as active, still formative seekers of identity, often struggling to make sense of where they fit in with the people in their lives. Often their personal sense of self does not square with the way in which others see them, which is understandably challenging, if not frustrating. This section, like the others, however reinforces the broad context of multiracialism addressed in the book. Ana Sofia De Brito’s essay captures the sense of her ‘other-ness’ as a Cape Verdean immigrant, and the balancing of the hierarchical mandates of her homeland with the external push to identify as either black or white in the US. Chris Collado, the son of an Afro-Cuban father and a white mother, often relied on the experiences of other multiracial friends to help explain who he was.
Part II of the book, In-Betweenness, has more of a focus on the students’ clear recognition that their multiracial background leaves them straddling their parents’ two worlds, not belonging fully in either. This quartet of essays can be considered to be something akin to the Piagetian notion of accommodation, in which each student integrates an additional measure of complexity about their life situation, as opposed to the more basic assimilation-like experience of the students’ writing in Part I. For example, student author Shannon Joyce Prince writes:
When asked what I am, I smile and say, ‘I am African American, Cherokee (Aniyunwiya) Native American, Chinese (Cantonese) American, and English American’. I excise nothing of myself. I claim the slave who was a mathematical genius; the storyteller, the quilt maker, and the wise healer; the bilingual railroad laborer and the farmer. … I am completely, concurrently and proudly all of my heritages. (p. 70)
The final section of the book, Part III: A Different Perspective, echoes the Piagetian concept of equilibration, with each of the students demonstrating the incorporation of their multiracialism, thereby enabling a personally meaningful, unique integration of self. This does not mean that there was less challenge, even struggle, evident in their stories. Lola Shannon, a high school dropout for a time, is the daughter of a white Canadian mother and a Jamaican father who was murdered during Lola’s lifetime. Anise Vance’s Iranian mother and African-American father prompted him to note: ‘I have often joked with friends that I am America’s worst nightmare, as I am both black and Middle Eastern’ (p. 144). Although Taica Hsu’s quest for identity as a Chinese/white/gay man has not been without significant struggle, it did not suppress his capacity for wry humour, as evidenced in the title of his essay, ‘Chow Mein Kampf’.
Not all of the essays are equally well written, but this is a small price to pay for tapping into this rich vein of diverse personal experience. And to those who would dismiss this book out of hand because of its skewed sampling (i.e. all the contributors attended Dartmouth), I would only point out that, for example, Daniel Levinson’s respected theory of adult development was grounded in research on the lives of 40 men, 35 white, 30 from Yale. Mixed is far more limited in scope, although also a timely, important heuristic—an opportunity for anyone to look more deeply at their own experience with self and an increasingly diverse nation of others.
Several years ago when our son was in grade school, I made a call to the home of his new friend Anthony to make arrangements for a sleepover. When I got off the phone, I said to Rick, ‘Her voice sounded like Anthony’s mom either is African-American or grew up in the South’. He looked up, reflectively, and said, ‘Well, his dad is white, and his mom is black, and Anthony’s kind of tan’. To our son, Anthony was just Anthony—perhaps signalling the kind of post-racial society that many still hope to be possible, especially in view of the election of the nation’s first African-American President, himself the product of a multiracial marriage. Alas, it has become clear that race is still a potent, often divisive issue in the nation; this book’s 12 essays provide important case material that can help to promote the kind of thoughtful conversation necessary to move us forward as a diverse people.
Counselor Education, Winona (MN) State University 263 Valley Oaks Drive, Winona, MN 55987, USA
Email: [email protected]
© 2014, Tim Hatfield
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2014.924207