Edited by Carol Camper.
This review was originally posted direct to my Instagram on April 19, 2019, so I will keep all the markup from that original here.
During the Philadelphia stop of her book tour, @leahlakshmiwrites, the author of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice mentioned how reading this book did a lot for them, and so I went and found it for myself. I have spent many hours thinking up how to write about my own experiences with being mixed race, perpetually nagged by feelings that it’s not an endeavor worthy for making public. So this book did a lot for me, not unlike staring into a still body of water.
This book was published in the 90s, in Canada, and has a predominance of personal stories from mixed race Black lesbians. There are stories from biracial people, from multiply mixed types of peoples, people with white mothers, people with mothers of color, and so on. There is personal prose, poetry, self-anaylsis, and other writings. Though comprised of writing largely from academics (whatever that means to you), it is not an academic book in my opinion.
If you are Black and mixed I imagine you may get a lot more out of this collection than someone who is white and mixed like me. It’s useful and cathartic to read other people wrangling with their identity and culture contradictions, and has given me the energy to continue on with my own processes digesting/accepting/unfurling/recognizing my own issues. Recommended.
Suggestion: Requesting a copy of this book from your local library can thus make it available to others. Or ask your local book store to order it for you. Go to anyone but wicked *maz*n.