Mixed: Multiracial College Students Tell Their Life Stories

Mixed presents engaging and incisive first-person experiences of what it is like to be multiracial in what is supposedly a postracial world. Bringing together twelve essays by college students who identify themselves as multiracial, this book considers what this identity means in a reality that occasionally resembles the post-racial dream of some and at other times recalls a familiar world of racial and ethnic prejudice. Exploring a wide range of concerns and anxieties, aspirations and ambitions, these young writers, who all attended Dartmouth College, come from a variety of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Unlike individuals who define themselves as having one racial identity, these students have lived the complexity of their identity from a very young age. In Mixed, a book that will benefit educators, students, and their families, they eloquently and often passionately reveal how they experience their multiracial identity, how their parents' race or ethnicity shaped their childhoods, and how perceptions of their race have affected their relationships.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction Part I. Who Am I? 1. Good Hair Ana Sofia De Brito 2. So, What Are You? Chris Collado 3. In My World 1+1 = 3 Yuki Kondo-Shah 4. A Sort of Hybrid Allison Bates Part II. In-Betweenness 5. Seeking to Be Whole Shannon Joyce Prince 6. The Development of a Happa Thomas Lane 7. A Little Plot of No-Man's-Land Ki Mae Ponniah Heussner 8. Finding Blackness Samiir Bolsten Part III. A Different Perspective 9. Chow Mein Kampf Taica Hsu 10. A Work in Progress Anise Vance 11. We Aren't That Different Dean O'Brien 12. Finding Zion Lola Shannon About the Editors

About the Author :
Andrew Garrod is Professor Emeritus of Education at Dartmouth College. He is coeditor of First Person, First Peoples: Native American College Graduates Tell Their Life Stories, Balancing Two Worlds: Asian American College Students Tell Their Life Stories, and Mi Voz, Mi Vida: Latino College Students Tell Their Life Stories, all from Cornell. Robert Kilkenny is Executive Director of the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention and a Clinical Associate in the School of Social Work at Simmons College. He is coeditor of Mi Voz, Mi Vida and Balancing Two Worlds. Christina Gómez is Professor of Sociology at Northeastern Illinois University. She is coeditor of Mi Voz, Mi Vida.

Review :
[A] valid and necessary addition to the field.... Mixed sheds light on pre-college, as well as collegiate experiences, which may be influential in the identities and lives of multiracial students. Furthermore, the 12 essays in the book explore aspects of multiracial students' experiences that have yet to be extensively researched, including the influences of familial dynamics, intersections of additional social identities, and the environments and communities in which one grows up.... The 12 essays are enchanting and informative, providing a much needed text for engaging multiraciality in higher education. - Jessica C. Harris (Journal of College Student Development) 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 terma provide an intimate first-person and appropriately diverse look at the multiple forces impacting the process of developing a multiracial identity.... This book's 12 essays provide important case material that can help promote the kind of thoughtful conversation necessary to move us forward as a diverse people. - Tim Hatfield (Journal of Moral Education)