What Are You?: Voices of Mixed-Race Young People - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805059687 ISBN 13: 9780805059687

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 1999

Synopsis

In the past three decades, the number of interracial marriages in the United States has increased by more than 800 percent. Now over four million children and teenagers do not identify themselves as being just one race or another.

Here is a book that allows these young people to speak in their own voices about their own lives.

What Are You? is based on the interviews the author has made over the past two years with mixed-race young people around the country. These fresh voices explore issues and topics such as dating, families, and the double prejudice and double insight that come from being mixed, but not mixed-up.

About this title

About the Author:

Pearl Fuyo Gaskins is an award-winning journalist whose articles frequently appear in Scholastic Choices magazine. The child of an interracial marriage, she wrote What Are You? "to be a forum for mixed-race young people to share their experiences and validate their feelings." This is her first book. Ms. Gaskins grew up in California, lived in Hawaii, and now resides with her husband in West Orange, New Jersey.

From Booklist:

"In the eyes of many people I am the product of a relationship that wasn't supposed to happen." "I'm no tragedy, and no exotic other." "I'm no jungle-fever rainbow baby." The contemporary voices are disturbing, frank, witty, and heartfelt. In essay, interview, and poetry, 45 mixed-race young people between the ages of 14 and 26, from all over the U.S., speak about their growing up. Whether black and white, white and Asian, Hispanic and black, Jewish and black, or whatever, each one is intensely personal; yet each one speaks to universals of coming-of-age as an outsider who doesn't fit into accepted categories. You read one piece, and it seems to say it all; turn to the next young person, and there is more surprise and drama. As with all authentic writing, the closer you get, the more diversity you see, and the more connections. Some speak of shame, some of pride; most have experienced both, in school and community, in their own families, in their individual searches for roots and love. Gaskins is a journalist for a teen educational magazine and is herself of mixed race. She allows the young people to speak for themselves, but she adds brief commentary where necessary as well as an excellent overview, and the insights of historians, therapists, and other experts. She applauds the recent revolutionary change that allows people to check more than one racial category on federal forms. The extensive annotated list of resources--including books, movies, Web sites, and advocacy groups--adds to the value of this landmark book. Read this with Bell's novel Zack, reviewed on p.1689, about one boy's search for his family roots, and with Nash's Forbidden Love, p.1687, for a view of American history through the lens of race. Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0805059687
• ISBN 13: 9780805059687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Fuyo Gaskins Pearl