Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural - Hardcover

O'Hearn, Claudine C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375400311 ISBN 13: 9780375400315

Publisher: Pantheon, 1998

Synopsis

As we approach the twenty-first century, biracialism and biculturalism are becoming increasingly common. Skin color and place of birth are no longer reliable signifiers of one's identity or origin. Simple questions like What are you? and Where are you from? aren't answered--they are discussed.
How do you measure someone's race or culture? Half this, quarter that, born here, raised there. What name do you give that? These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address both the difficulties of not fitting into and the benefits of being part of two worlds.  Danzy Senna parodies the media's fascination with biracials in a futuristic piece about the mulatto millennium. Garrett Hongo writes about watching his mixed-race children play in a sea of blond hair and white faces, realizing that suburban Oregon might swallow up their unique racial identity. Francisco Goldman shares his frustration with having constantly to explain himself in terms of his Latino and Jewish roots. Malcolm Gladwell understands that being biracial frees him from racial discrimination but also holds him hostage to questions of racial difference.  For Indira Ganesan, India and its memory are evoked by the aromas of foods.
Through the lens of personal experience, these essays offer a broader spectrum of meaning for race and culture.  And in the process, they map a new ethnic terrain that transcends racial and cultural division.

About this title

About the Author

Claudine Chiawei O'Hearn was born in Hong Kong and raised in Asia and Europe. She lives in New York City, where she works as an editor.

From the Back Cover

"Half and Half is more than the sum of its parts--it is at once somber and hilarious, irreverent and moving. These writers show us, in the alchemy of art, how their experiences in identifying who they are make not only for cultural news but for riveting reading."         --Chang-Rae Lee, author of Native Speaker

"The future is here in these fascinating looks at complicated identities. Insightful, hilarious, and often heartbreaking. I can't wait for my daughter (part Cuban, part Japanese, part Jewish) to grow up and read it."

--Cristina García, author of The Agüero Sisters

"A wonderful and thought-provoking collection which accurately captures the cultural and racial fusions that not only reflect the reality of our modern world, but increasingly feed our sense of who we are as individuals."
                        

--Caryl Phillips, author of The Nature of Blood

"A brilliant Venn diagram of intersecting solitudes, dreams, and testimonies. From their colliding worlds, bicultural writers search for homeground in opposing psychic hemispheres, funny corners where dual backgrounds merge into wrenching awkwardness, then into hard-won consciousness."        
        --Maria Flook, author of My Sister Life

From the Inside Flap

ch the twenty-first century, biracialism and biculturalism are becoming increasingly common. Skin color and place of birth are no longer reliable signifiers of one's identity or origin. Simple questions like What are you? and Where are you from? aren't answered--they are discussed.<br>How do you measure someone's race or culture? Half this, quarter that, born here, raised there. What name do you give that? These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address both the difficulties of not fitting into and the benefits of being part of two worlds. Danzy Senna parodies the media's fascination with biracials in a futuristic piece about the mulatto millennium. Garrett Hongo writes about watching his mixed-race children play in a sea of blond hair and white faces, realizing that suburban Oregon might swallow up their unique racial identity. Francisco Goldman shares his frustration with having constantly to explain himself in terms of his Latino and Jewish roots. Malcolm Gladwell

Reviews

New Yorker O'Hearn, who was born in Hong Kong of an Irish-American father and a Chinese mother, first tells her own story?she found she could pass as Hawaiian, Italian or even Russian?then goes on to collect first-person accounts of 17 others with biracial or bicultural backgrounds who grew up in the U.S. or emigrated here. The multicultural combinations are complex and varied: a woman with a Chinese-Jamaican mother and a Chinese-American father, a man with an English father and a Jamaican mother ("They are not two shades of brown. They are black and white"), a woman with a mother from Brooklyn and a father from Bombay. Other contributors do not have a racially mixed background but write as strangers in a strange land: a South Vietnamese who escaped by boat and grew up in Southern California; a Hindu from Calcutta who attends school in America. Others reflect Mexican, Iranian and Japanese cultures. The names of some of the contributors are familiar?Gish Jen, Bharati Mukherjee, James McBride, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Lisa See?but many are not, and although the tone throughout ranges from bitter and self-absorbed to satirical, most reveal a quiet sense of humor. Several of the entries have been published previously in anthologies or magazines.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

paper 0-375-70011-0 A lively collection of essays on the theme of being biracial and bicultural in contemporary American society. Editor O'Hearn, herself born in Hong Kong and raised in Asia and Europe, has assembled a passionate medley of writings by 18 authors who share a bicultural or biracial identity. Despite vast differences in their social, economic, and racial backgrounds, a number of subtopics emerge. Among these is the sense of alienation experienced by them as children. The need to belong was in many cases intensified by prejudice as a pressure all too frequently encountered. Meri Nana-Ama Dunquah, a native of Ghana who grew up in Washington, D.C., faced her cruelest hostility from black American kids who taunted her with shouts of ``You-you-you African! Go back to Africa!'' Journalist Danzy Senna, the daughter of a WASP mother and a black-Mexican father, identifies herself as black, but passes for white often enough to hear whitesincluding well-meaning white liberals--speak in ``smug disdain'' about blacks. And the prejudice, of course, is not exclusive to childhood or to America. Francisco Goldman, the brown-skinned son of a Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, encountered the worst display of prejudice when visiting Madrid, where taxis wouldn't stop for him but police officers did. Still, its also apparent that many biracial and bicultural people have enjoyed an enviable edge. Though not totally at home in any one world, they seem better able to adapt to many, as Meri Nana-Ama Dunquah observes: ``Like a chameleon I am ever-changing. The essays make it plain, too, just how obsessed we Americans are with matters of race and identity. Replete with candid accounts and sensitive musings. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 7^-12. Where are you from? When do you use "we" ? The answers aren't simple for the 18 writers of these personal essays who live and work in the U.S. but aren't sure where they belong. Some are immigrants; most are children or parents of biracial, bicultural families. In her introduction, editor O'Hearn (part Irish American, part Chinese) says she is always a foreigner, wherever she is ("Suspended, I can go anywhere but home"). David Mura writes with tenderness about his daughter: he is third-generation Japanese American, his wife is WASP and a small part Jewish; he sees little of his family's mixed race and culture reflected in the media. Danzy Senna's hilarious parody ("Make Mulattos, not War") says it clearly: multiculturalism is about dealing with racism and power, not about plates of ethnic food. Other contributors include the well-known writers Gish Jen and Francisco Goldman and novelist Julia Alvarez, who makes the point that Latinos as a group embrace many races and differences. Whether they feel part of the mainstream or on the edge, many teens will find themselves in these eloquent memoirs that speak about coming of age and finding a place to call home. Hazel Rochman

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375400311
• ISBN 13: 9780375400315
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272