Mixed Race Studies

Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia

Peter Lang Publishing Group
2007
186 pages
Weight: 0.330 kg, 0.728 lbs
Paperback ISBN: 978-3-03911-323-1
Series: Studies in Asia-Pacific “Mixed Race” (Volume 2)

Edited by:

Maureen Perkins, Associate Professor of History, Anthropology and Sociology
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

What does an Australian look like? Many Australians assume that there is such a thing as an ‘ethnic’ face, and that it indicates recent arrival or refugee status. This volume contains nine life narratives by Australians who reflect on the experience of being categorised on the basis of their facial appearance.

The problem of who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’ is at the heart of some of the most important challenges facing the contemporary world. Assuming that facial appearance and identity are inextricably linked makes this challenge even harder.

The introduction by the editor provides the theoretical framework to these narratives. It discusses the relevance to notions of belonging and identity of the term ‘mixed race’, and concludes that we are all mixed race, whether we look white, black or ‘ethnic’.

Table of Contents

• Maureen Perkins: Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia
• Jan Teagle Kapetas: Lubra Lips, Lubra Lips: Reflections on my Face
• Jean Boladeras: The Desolate Loneliness of Racial Passing
• Lynette Rodriguez: But Who Are You Really?
• Wendy Holland: Rehearsing Multiple Identities
• Christine Choo/Antoinette Carrier/Clarissa Choo/Simon Choo: Being Eurasian
• Glenn D’Cruz: ‘Where Are You Coming From, Sir?’
• Farida Tilbury: Hyphenated Realities: Growing up in an Indian-American-Bruneian Baha’i in ‘Multicultural’ Australia
• Hsu-Ming Teo: Alien Asian in the Australian Nation
• Ien Ang: Between Asia and the West.

Race and Ethnicity in Society: The Changing Landscape, 3rd Edition

Cengage Learning
2012
480 pages
ISBN-10: 1111519536; ISBN-13: 9781111519537

Edited by

Elizabeth Higginbotham, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and Criminology
University of Delaware

Margaret L. Andersen, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Sociology
University of Delaware

This engaging reader is organized in four major thematic parts, subdivided into thirteen different sections. Part I (“The Social Basis of Race and Ethnicity”) establishes the analytical frameworks that are now being used to think about race in society. The section examines the social construction of race and ethnicity as concepts and experience. Part II (“Continuity and Change: How We Got Here and What It Means”) explores both the historical patterns of inclusion and exclusion that have established racial and ethnic inequality, while also explaining some of the contemporary changes that are shaping contemporary racial and ethnic relations. Part III (“Race and Social Institutions”) examines the major institutional structures in contemporary society and investigates patterns of racial inequality within these institutions. Persistent inequality in the labor market and in patterns of community, residential, and educational segregation continue to shape the life chances of different groups. Part IV (“Building a Just Society”) concludes the book by looking at both large-scale contexts of change, such as those reflected in the movement to elect the first African American president.

• Major themes include coverage showing the diversity of experiences that now constitute “race” in the United States; teaching students the significance of race as a socially constructed system of social relations; showing the connection between different racial identities and the social structure of race; understanding how racism works as a belief system rooted in societal institutions; providing a social structural analysis of racial inequality; providing a historical perspective on how the racial order has emerged and how it is maintained; examining how people have contested the dominant racial order; exploring current strategies for building a just multiracial society.
• Each section includes several pages of analysis that outline the main concepts to be covered, providing a clear initial roadmap for reading and a convenient resource students can use with assignments and while preparing for exams.
• The text’s unique organization according to overarching themes and relevant subtopics, including identity, social construction of race, why race matters, inequality, and segregation, places the articles into a broader context to promote greater understanding.
• This innovative text looks beyond a simple black/white dichotomy and focuses more broadly on an extremely wide range of ethnic groups, providing a much more realistic and useful exploration of key topics that is more relevant and compelling for today’s diverse student population.

Table of Contents

• PART I: THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RACE AND ETHINICITY
  • 1. The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 1. Howard F. Taylor, “Defining Race”
    • 2. Joseph L. Graves, Jr., “The Race Myth”
    • 3. Abby Ferber, “Planting the Seed: The Invention of Race”
    • 4. Karen Brodkin, “How Did Jews Become White Folks?”
    • 5. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “On Racial Formation”—Student Exercises
  • 2. What Do You Think? Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Racism
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 6. Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, “American Racism in the Twenty-First Century”
    • 7. Charles A. Gallagher, “Color-Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America”
    • 8. Judith Ortiz Cofer, “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria”
    • 9. Rainier Spencer, “Mixed Race Chic”
    • 10. Rebekah Nathan, “What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student”—Student Exercises
  • 3. Representing Race and Ethnicity: The Media and Popular Culture
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 11. Craig Watkins, “Black Youth and the Ironies of Capitalism”
    • 12. Fatimah N. Muhammed, “How to NOT Be 21st Century Venus Hottentots”
    • 13. Rosie Molinary, “María de la Barbie”
    • 14. Charles Springwood and C. Richard King, “‘Playing Indian’: Why Native American Mascots Must End”
    • 15. Jennifer C. Mueller, Danielle Dirks, and Leslie Houts Picca, “Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial Order”—Student Exercises
  • 4. Who Are You? Race and Identity
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 16. Beverly Tatum, interview with John O’Neil, “Why are the Black Kids Sitting Together?”
    • 17. Priscilla Chan, “Drawing the Boundaries”
    • 18. Michael Omi and Taeku Lee, “Barack Like Me: Our First Asian American President”
    • 19. Tim Wise, “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son”—Student Exercises
• PART II: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHAT IT MEANS
  • 5. Who Belongs? Race, Rights, and Citizenship
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 20. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Citizenship and Inequality”
    • 21. C. Matthew Snipp, “The First Americans: American Indians”
    • 22. Susan M. Akram and Kevin R. Johnson, “Race, Civil Rights, and Immigration Law After September 11, 2001: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims”
    • 23. Peggy Levitt, “Salsa and Ketchup: Transnational Migrants Saddle Two Worlds”—Student Exercises
  • 6. The Changing Face of America: Immigration
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 24. Mae M. Ngai, “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America”
    • 25. Nancy Foner, “From Ellis Island to JFK: Education in New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration”
    • 26. Charles Hirschman and Douglas S. Massey, “Places and Peoples: The New American Mosaic”
    • 27. Pew Research Center, “Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America”—Student Exercises
  • 7. Exploring Intersections: Race, Class, Gender and Inequality
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 28. Patricia Hill Collins, “Toward a New Vision: Race, Class and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection”
    • 29. Yen Le Espiritu, “Theorizing Race, Gender, and Class”
    • 30. Roberta Coles and Charles Green, “The Myth of the Missing Black Father”
    • 31. Nikki Jones, “From Good to Ghetto”
    • 32. Gladys García-Lopez and Denise A. Segura, “‘They Are Testing You All the Time’: Negotiating Dual Femininities among Chicana Attorneys”—Student Exercises
• PART III: RACE AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
  • 8. Race and the Workplace
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 33. William Julius Wilson, “Toward a Framework for Understanding Forces that Contribute to or Reinforce Racial Inequality”
    • 34. Deirdre A. Royster, “Race and The Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs”
    • 35. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Families on the Frontier”.
    • 36. Angela Stuesse, “Race, Migration and Labor Control”—Student Exercises
  • 9. Shaping Lives and Love: Race, Families, and Communities
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 37. Joe R. Feagin and Karyn D. McKinney, ”The Family and Community Costs of Racism”
    • 38. Dorothy Roberts, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare”
    • 39. Kumiko Nemoto, “Interracial Relationships: Discourses and Images”
    • 40. Zhenchao Qian, “Breaking the Last Taboo: Interracial Marriage in America”—Student Exercises
  • 10. How We Live and Learn: Segregation, Housing, and Education
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 41. John E. Farley and Gregory D. Squires, “Fences and Neighbors: Segregation in the 21st Century”
    • 42. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, “Sub-Prime as a Black Catastrophe”
    • 43. Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, “Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation and the Need for New Integration Strategies”
    • 44. Heather Beth Johnson and Thomas M. Shapiro, “Good Neighborhoods, Good Schools: Race and the ‘Good Choices’ of White Families”—Student Exercises
  • 11. Do We Care? Race, Health Care and the Environment
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 45. H. Jack Geiger, “Health Disparities: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Know? What Should We Do?”
    • 46. Shirley A. Hill, “Cultural Images and the Health of African American Women”
    • 47. David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle, “Poisoning the Planet: The Struggle for Environmental Justice”
    • 48. Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright, “Race, Place and the Environment”—Student Exercises
  • 12. Criminal Injustice? Courts, Crime, and the Law
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 49. Bruce Western, “Punishment and Inequality”
    • 50. Rubén Rumbaut, Roberto Gonzales, Goinaz Kamaie, and Charlie V. Moran, “Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment among First and Second Generation Young Men”
    • 51. Christina Swarns, “The Uneven Scales of Capital Justice”
    • 52. Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record”—Student Exercises
• PART IV: BUILDING A JUST SOCIETY
  • 13. Moving Forward: Analysis and Social Action
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 53. Thomas F. Pettigrew, “Post-Racism? Putting Obama’s Victory in Perspective”
    • 54. Frank Dobbins, Alexandra Kalev, and Erin Kelly, “Diversity Management in Corporate America”
    • 55. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Ways to Fight Hate”—Student Exercises

The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics

MIT Press
January 2009
368 pages
7 x 9, 35 illus.
Paper ISBN-10: 0-262-58275-9; ISBN-13: 978-0-262-58275-9

Evelynn M. Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies (and Dean of Harvard College)
Harvard University

Rebecca M. Herzig, Professor of Women and Gender Studies
Bates College, Lewiston, Maine

The Nature of Difference documents how distinctions between people have been generated in and by the life sciences. Through a wide-ranging selection of primary documents and insightful commentaries by the editors, it charts the shifting boundaries of science and race through more than two centuries of American history. The documents, primarily writings by authoritative, eminent scientists intended for their professional peers, show how various sciences of race have changed their object of study over time: from racial groups to types to populations to genomes and beyond. The book’s thematic and synthetic approach reveals the profoundly diverse array of practices—countless acts of observation, quantification, and experimentation—that enabled the consequential categorizations we inherit.
 
The documents—most reproduced in their entirety—range from definitions of race in dictionaries published between 1886 and 2005 to an exchange of letters between Benjamin Baneker and Thomas Jefferson; from Samuel Cartwright’s 1851 “Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race” to a 1950 UNESCO declaration that race is a social myth; from a 1928 paper detailing the importance of the glands in shaping human nature to a 2005 report of the discovery of a genetic basis for skin color. Such documents, given context by the editors’ introductions to each thematic chapter, provide scholars, journalists, and general readers with the rich historical background necessary for understanding contemporary developments in racial science.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS OF “RACE”
• 2. ANATOMICAL OBSERVATIONS
• 3. IMMUNITY AND CONTAGION
• 4. EVOLUTION AND DEGENERATION
• 5. TECHNIQUES OF MEASUREMENT
• 6. GLANDULAR DIFFERENCES
• 7. HYBRIDITY AND ADMIXTURE
• 8. TOWARD GENETICS
• 9. THE END OF RACE?
• Index

Cultural Representation in Native America

AltaMira Press
August 2006
192 pages
Cloth 0-7591-0984-2 / 978-0-7591-0984-1
Paper 0-7591-0985-0 / 978-0-7591-0985-8

Edited by:

Andrew J. Jolivétte, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies
San Francisco State University

Today as in the past there are many cultural and commercial representations of American Indians that, thoughtlessly or otherwise, negatively shape the images of indigenous people. Jolivétte and his co-authors challenge and contest these images, demonstrating how Native representation and identity are at the heart of Native politics and Native activism. In portrayals of a Native Barbie Doll or a racist mascot, disrespect of Native women, misconceptions of mixed race identities, or the commodification of all things “Indian”, the authors reveal how the very existence of Native people continues to be challenged, with harmful repercussions in social and legal policy, not just in popular culture. The authors re-articulate Native history, religion, identity, and oral and literary traditions in ways that allow the true identity and persona of the Native person to be recognized and respected. It is a project that is fundamental to ethnic revitalization and the recognition of indigenous rights in North America. This book is a provocative and essential introduction for students and Native and non-Native people who wish to understand the images and realities of American Indian lifeways in American society.

Table of Contents

• PART I: Contestation and Representation, Chapter 1: Mapping Contests in Unknown Locations
  Paula Gunn Allen

• Say Hau to Native American Barbie
  Kim Shuck

• Liquor Moccasins
  Philip Klasky

• (Dis)Locating Spiritual Knowledge: Embodied Ideologies, Social Landscapes, and the Power of the Neoshamanic Other
  Sara Sutler-Cohen

• Mascots in the New Millennium
  Winona LaDuke

• PART II: Contestation and Politics, Chapter 6: Native American Resistance and Revitalization in the Era of Self-Determination
  Troy Johnson

• Identity, Oral Tradition, and Inter-generational Healing in the Southern Paiute Salt Songs
  Melissa Nelson

• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
  Winona LaDuke

• Part III: Contestation and Mixed Race Identity; Chapter 9: In the Tracks of ‘the’ Native Woman
  Norma Alarcon

• Chapped with Weather and Age: Mixed-Blood Identity and the Shape of History
  Sara Stuler-Cohen

• Dunn Playing Indian
  Carolyn Dunn

• Examining the Regional and Multi-Generational Context of Creole and American Indian Identity
  Andrew Jolivette

Les Cenelles

Centenary College of Louisiana Press / Editions Tintamarre
January 2003
208 pages
ISBN: 0-9723258-9-1

Armand Lanusse

The text is in French.

With few exceptions, the poets of Les Cenelles–the very first collection of poetry by Creoles of color–do not directly address their precarious situation in a South that was ever increasingly hostile to the racial caste to which they belonged. On the contrary, a naive reader might only discover the most pedestrian sorts of romantic subjects in these poems written by seventeen free men of color. However , why would Valcour B… refer to himself as an “unrecognized son of New Orleans?” What “cruel fate” might have forced P. Dalcour into exile? What is the source of the regret, the preoccupation with departure and the fear of betrayal that seeps from every line of these works?

However gifted and diligent they might have been, free people of color were forced to live within the constraints of their fate as second class citizens. May the modern reader delve into these “modest Cenelles” conscience of the troubling context that underpins their creation. Without this awareness, the profound depths of their melancholy spirit will escape him completely.

Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color

Louisiana State University Press
August 2000
344 pages
Trim: 6 x 9 , Illustrations: 14 halftones
Paper ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-2601-1

Edited by:

Sybil Kein (born Consuela Marie Moore), Distinguished Professor of English Emerita
University of Michigan

The word Creole evokes a richness rivaled only by the term’s widespread misunderstanding. Now both aspects of this unique people and culture are given thorough, illuminating scrutiny in Creole, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary history of Louisiana’s Creole population. Written by scholars, many of Creole descent, the volume wrangles with the stuff of legend and conjecture while fostering an appreciation for the Creole contribution to the American mosaic.

The collection opens with a historically relevant perspective found in Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson’s 1916 piece “People of Color of Louisiana” and continues with contemporary writings: Joan M. Martin on the history of quadroon balls; Michel Fabre and Creole expatriates in France; Barbara Rosendale Duggal with a debiased view of Marie Laveau; Fehintola Mosadomi and the downtrodden roots of Creole grammar; Anthony G. Barthelemy on skin color and racism as an American legacy; Caroline Senter on Reconstruction poets of political vision; and much more. Violet Harrington Bryan, Lester Sullivan, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Sybil Kein, Mary Gehman, Arthé A. Anthony, and Mary L. Morton offer excellent commentary on topics that range from the lifestyles of free women of color in the nineteenth century to the Afro-Caribbean links to Creole cooking.

By exploring the vibrant yet marginalized culture of the Creole people across time, Creole goes far in diminishing past and present stereotypes of this exuberant segment of our society. A study that necessarily embraces issues of gender, race and color, class, and nationalism, it speaks to the tensions of an increasingly ethnically mixed mainstream America.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I HISTORY
  • 1 People of Color in Louisiana – Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson
  • 2 Marcus Christian’s Treatment of Les Gens de Couloir Libre – Violet Harrington Bryan
  • 3 Plaçage and the Louisiana Gens de Couleur Libre: How Race and Sex Defined the Lifestyles of Free Women of Color – Joan M. Martin
  • 4 Composers of Color of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: The History Behind the Music – Lester Sullivan
  • 5 The Yankee Hugging the Creole: Reading Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon – Jennifer DeVere Brody
  • 6 The Use of Louisiana Creole in Southern Literature – Sybil Kein
• II LEGACY
  • 7 Marie Laveau: The Voodoo Queen Repossessed – Barbara Rosendale Duggal
  • 8 New Orleans Creole Expatriates in France: Romance and Reality – Michel Fabre
  • 9 Visible Means of Support: Businesses, Professions, and Trades of Free People of Color – Mary Gehman
  • 10 The Origin of Louisiana Creole – Fehintola Mosadomi
  • 11 Louisiana Creole Food Culture: Afro-Caribbean Links – Sybil Kein
  • 12 Light, Bright, Damn Near White: Race, the Politics of Genealogy, and the Strange Case of Susie Guillory – Anthony G. Barthelemy
  • 13 Creole Poets on the Verge of a Nation – Caroline Senter
  • 14 “Lost Boundaries”: Racial Passing and Poverty in Segregated New Orleans – Arthé Anthony
  • 15 Creole Culture in the Poetry of Sybil Kein – Mary L. Morton
• Contributors
• Index

Miscegenation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women

Sister Vision Press
May 1994
389 pages
8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
Paperback ISBN: 092081395X; ISBN 13: 9780920813959
This book is out of print.

Edited by

Carol Camper

Miscegenation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women is a stunning and long awaited collection of some of the most poignant writing by more than forty women of mixed racial heritage.  Together they explore the concept of a mixed race identity, the fervour of belonging, the harsh reality of not belonging—of grappling in two or more worlds and the final journey home.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Carol Camper Into the Mix
• Edge to the Middle … location, identity, paradox
  • Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar Ms. Edge Innate
  • A. Nicole Bandy Sorry, Our Translator’s Out Sick Today
  • Culture Is Not Static
  • Lisa Jensen “journal entry 25/10/92″
  • Elehna de Sousa Untitled
  • Nadra Qadeer Spider Woman
  • Deanne Achong Untitled
  • Michele Chai Don’t
  • Naomi Zack My Racial Self Over Time
  • Mercedes Baines Mulatto Woman a honey beige wrapper
  • Mixed Race Women’s Group—Dialogue One
  • Michele Paulse Commingled
  • Lara Doan Untitled
  • Lisa Suhair Majaj Boundaries, Borders, Horizons
• But You Don’t Look Like a… faces, body, hair
  • Lisa Jensen (one more time now.)
  • Ijosé Two Halves—One Whole (Part I)
  • Two Halves—One Whole (Part two)
  • Ngaire Blankenberg Untitled
  • Blue
  • Joanne Arnott Mutt’s Memoir
  • Lois Robertson-Douglass No Nation Gal
  • Marilyn Elain Carmen The Issue of Skin Colour
  • Claire Huang Kinsley Questions People Have Asked Me
  • Questions I Have Asked Myself
  • Gitanjali Saxena Second Generation; Once Removed
• My Name is Peaches… obiectification.exoticizaiton
  • Mercedes Baines Bus Fucking
  • Where Are You From? A broken record
  • Michele Chai Resistance 153
  • S.R.W. What is a “Sister”?
  • Barbara Malanka Noblewomen In Exile
  • Stephanie Martin Is true what dem seh bout colrd pussy?
  • Michelle La Flamme Yo White Boy
  • Carol Camper Genetic Appropriation
  • Family Album
• Some More Stories
  • Annharte Emilia I Should a Said Something Political
  • Victoria Gonzalez Nicaragua, Desde Siempre: War fragments from a woman’s pen
  • Marilyn Dumont The Halfbreed Parade
  • The Red & White
  • S.R.W. For My Sister Rosemary: Just Like Mine
  • Claiming Identity: Mixed Race Black Women Speak
  • Joanne Arnott Song About
  • kim mosa mcneilly don’t mix me up
• The Unmasking… betrayals, hard truths
  • Lorraine Mention Journal Entry: Thoughts on My “Mother”
  • Letter to a Friend
  • Nadra Qadeer To a Traveller
  • Nila Gupta Falling from the Sky
  • Rage is my sister
  • Jaimi Carter Are You Writing a Book?
  • Nona Saunders Mother Milk
  • Children’s Games
  • Pussy Willows and Pink
  • S.R.W. Untitled
  • That Just Isn’t Right
  • Michi Chase One
  • Karen Stanley Warnings (Suspense Version)
  • Joanne Arnott Little On The Brown Side
  • Speak Out, For Example
  • Anonymous White Mother, Black Daughter
  • Mixed Race Women’s Group—Dialogue Two
  • Heather Green This Piece Done, I Shall Be Renamed
  • Myriam Chancy Je suis un Nègre
  • Yolanda Retter Quincentennial Blues
• Are We Home Yet?… return to self and cultures
  • Diana Abu-Jaber Tbe Honeymooners
  • Nona Saunders Tapestry I
  • Tapestry II Carole Gray Heritage
  • Bernardine Evaristo Letters from London
  • Ngaire Blankenberg Halifax
  • Kukumo Rocks Route to My Roots
  • Pam Bailey Naming and Claiming Multicultural Identity
  • Maxine Hayman Shortbread and Oolichan Grease
  • Seni Seneviratne Cinnamon Roots
  • Shanti Thakur Domino: Filming the Stories of Interracial People
  • Nila Gupta The Garden of My (Be)Longing 350
  • Gitanjali Saxena Gitanjali’s Bio
  • Kathy Ann March Like Koya
  • Faith Adiele Learning to Eat
  • The Multicultural Self
  • Remembering Anticipating Africa
• Contributors’ Notes

“A Half Caste” and Other Writings

University of Illinois Press
2003
208 pages
6 x 9 in.
Paper ISBN: 978-0-252-07094-5

Onoto Watanna (1875-1954)

Edited by:

Linda Trinh Moser, Professor of English
Missouri State University

Elizabeth Rooney

Previously uncollected short stories and essays by the first fiction writer of Chinese ancestry to be published in the U.S.

“What did it mean to be a ‘half caste’ in early twentieth-century North America? Winnifred Eaton lived that experience and, as Onoto Watanna, she wrote about it. This collection of her short works—some newly discovered, others long awaited by scholars–ranges from breathless magazine romance to story melodrama and provides a riveting introduction to a unique literary personality.”—Diana Birchall, author of Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton Onoto Watanna (1875-1954) was born Winnifred Eaton, the daughter of a British father and a Chinese mother. The first novelist of Chinese descent to be published in the United States, she “became” Japanese to escape Americans’ scorn of the Chinese and to capitalize on their fascination with things Japanese. The earliest essay here, “A Half Caste,” appeared in 1898, a year before Miss Numé: A Japanese-American Romance, the first of her best-selling novels. The last story, “Elspeth,” appeared in 1923. Of Watanna’s numerous shorter works, this volume includes nineteen—thirteen stories and six essays—intended to show the scope and versatility of her writing. While some of Watanna’s fictional characters will remind today’s readers of the delicate but tragic Madame Butterfly, others foreshadow such types as the trickster in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey (a novel in which Onoto Watanna makes a cameo appearance). Watanna’s characters are always capable, clever, and inventive—molded in the author’s own image.

Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters

Stanford University Press
2009
312 pages
11 tables, 15 figures, 16 illustrations
Cloth ISBN: 9780804759984
Paper ISBN: 9780804759991
E-book ISBN: 9780804770996

Edited by:

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Professor of Asian American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Shades of Difference addresses the widespread but little studied phenomenon of colorism—the preference for lighter skin and the ranking of individual worth according to skin tone. Examining the social and cultural significance of skin color in a broad range of societies and historical periods, this insightful collection looks at how skin color affects people’s opportunities in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America.

Is skin color bias distinct from racial bias? How does skin color preference relate to gender, given the association of lightness with desirability and beauty in women? The authors of this volume explore these and other questions as they take a closer look at the role Western-dominated culture and media have played in disseminating the ideal of light skin globally. With its comparative, international focus, this enlightening book will provide innovative insights and expand the dialogue around race and gender in the social sciences, ethnic studies, African American studies, and gender and women’s studies.

Contents

Contributors
• Introduction: Economies of Color—Angela P. Harris
• Part I The Significance of Skin Color: Transnational Divergences and Convergences
  • 1. The Social Consequences of Skin Color in Brazil—Edward Telles
  • 2. A Colorstruck World: Skin Tone, Achievement, and Self-Esteem Among African American Women—Verna M. Keith
  • 3. The Latin Americanization of U.S. Race Relations: A New Pigmentocracy—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David R. Dietrich
• Part II Meanings of Skin Color: Race, Gender, Ethnic Class, and National Identity
  • 4. Filipinos and the Color Complex: Ideal Asian Beauty—Joanne L. Rondilla
  • 5. The Color of an Ideal Negro Beauty Queen: Miss Bronze 1961-1968—Maxine Leeds Craig
  • 6. Caucasian, Coolie, Black, or White? Color and Race in the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora—Aisha Khan
  • 7. Ihe Dynamics of Color: Mestizaje, Racism, and Blackness in Veracruz, Mexico—Christina A. Sue
• Part III Consuming Lightness: Modernity, Transnationalism, and Commodification
  • 8. Skin Tone and the Persistence of Biological Race in Egg Donation for Assisted Reproduction—Charis Thompson
  • 9. Fair Enough? Color and the Commodification of Self in Indian Matrimonials—Jyotsna Vaid
  • 10. Consuming Lightness: Segmented Markets and Global Capital in the Skin-Whitening Trade—Evelyn Nakano Glenn
  • 11. Skin Lighteners in South Africa: Transnational Entanglements and Technologies of the Self—Lynn M. Thomas
• Part IV Countering Colorism: Legal Approaches
  • 12. Multilayered Racism: Courts’ Continued Resistance to Colorism Claims—Taunya Lovell Banks
  • 13. The Case for Legal Recognition of Colorism Claims—Trina Jones
  • 14. Latinos at Work: When Color Discrimination Involves More Than Color—Tanya Katerí Hernandez
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

Read the Introduction here.

As We Are Now: Mixblood Essays on Race and Identity

University of California Press
January 1998
282 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780520210738

edited by

William S. Penn, Professor of Creative Writing
Michigan State University

The thirteen contributors to As We Are Now invite readers to explore with them the untamed territory of race and mixblood identity in North America. A “mixblood,” according to editor W.S. Penn, recognizes that his or her identity comes not from distinct and separable strains of ancestry but from the sum of the tension and interplay of all his or her ancestral relationships. These first-person narratives cross racial, national, and disciplinary boundaries in a refreshingly experimental approach to writing culture. Their authors call on similar but varied cultural and aesthetic traditions—mostly oral—in order to address some aspect of race and identity about which they feel passionate, and all resist the essentialist point of view. Mixblood Native American, Mestizo/a, and African-American writers focus their discussion on the questions indigenous and minority people ask and the way in which they ask them, clearly merging the singular “I” with the communal “we.” These are new voices in the dialogue of ethnic writers, and they offer a highly original treatment of an important subject.

Table of Contents

Introduction
William S. Penn

Cutting and Pinning Patterns
Erika Aigner-Varoz

Howling at the Moon: The Queer but True Story of My Life as a Hank Williams Song
Craig Womack

Crossing Borders from the Beginning
Alfonso Rodriguez

Knots
Carol Kalafatic

What Part Moon
Inez Petersen

Tradition and the Individual Imitation
William S. Penn

On Mapping and Urban Shamans
Kimberly Blaeser

Race and Mixed-Race: A Personal Tour
Rainier Spencer

Visions in the Four Directions: Five Hundred Years of Resistance and Beyond
Arturo Aldama

Between the Masques
Diane DuBose Brunner

From the Turn of the Century to the New Age: Playing Indian, Past and Present
Shari Huhndorf

Troublemakers
Rolando Romero

Ritchie Valens Is Dead: E Pluribus Unum
Patricia Penn Hilden

Notes on Contributors