Mixed Race Studies

Communication, Race, and Family: Exploring Communication in Black, White, and Biracial Families

Routledge
1999-08-01
Pages: 264
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-8058-2938-9
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8058-2939-6

Edited by:

Thomas J. Socha

Rhunette C. Diggs

This groundbreaking volume explores how family communication influences the perennial and controversial topic of race. In assembling this collection, editors Thomas J. Socha and Rhunette C. Diggs argue that the hope for managing America’s troubles with “race” lies not only with communicating about race at public meetings, in school, and in the media, but also—and more fundamentally—with families communicating constructively about race at home.

African-American and European-American family communication researchers come together in this volume to investigate such topics as how Black families communicate to manage the issue of racism; how Black parent-child communication is used to manage the derogation of Black children; the role of television in family communication about race; the similarities and differences between and among communication in Black, White, and biracial couples and families; and how family communication education can contribute to a brighter future for all. With the aim of developing a clearer understanding of the role that family communication plays in society’s move toward a multicultural world, this volume provides a crucial examination of how families struggle with issues of ethnic cultural diversity.

Table of Contents

• M.K. Asante, Foreword. Preface
• T.J. Socha, R.C. Diggs, At the Crossroads of Communication, Race, and Family: Toward Understanding Black, White, and Biracial Family Communication
• J.L. Daniel, J.E. Daniel, African-American Childrearing: The Context of a Hot Stove
• I.B. Ferguson, African-American Parent-Child Communication About Racial Derogation
• S.L. Parks, Race and Electronic Media in the Lives of Four Families: An Ethnographic Study
• R.A. Davilla, White Children’s Talk About Race and Culture: Family Communication and Intercultural Socialization
• R.C. Diggs, African-American and European-American Adolescents’ Perceptions of Self-Esteem as Influenced by Parent and Peer Communication and Support Environments
• M. Dainton, African-American, European-American, and Biracial Couples’ Meanings for and Experiences in Marriage. M.P. Orbe, Communicating About “Race” in Interracial Families
• B.K. Alexander, H.P. LeBlanc, III, Cooking Gumbo–Examining Cultural Dialogue About Family: A Black-White Narrativization of Lived Experience in Southern Louisiana
• T.J. Socha, J. Beigle, Toward Improving Life at the Crossroads: Family Communication Education and Multicultural Competence
• K. Galvin, Epilogue: Illuminating and Evoking Issues of Race and Family Communication

The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940

University of Texas Press
1990
143 pages
10 b&w illus.
6 x 9 in.
ISBN: 978-0-292-73857-7

Edited by

Richard Graham, Emeritus Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor of History
University of Texas, Austin

With chapters by Thomas E. Skidmore, Aline Helg, and Alan Knight

From the mid-nineteenth century until the 1930s, many Latin American leaders faced a difficult dilemma regarding the idea of race. On the one hand, they aspired to an ever-closer connection to Europe and North America, where, during much of this period, “scientific” thought condemned nonwhite races to an inferior category. Yet, with the heterogeneous racial makeup of their societies clearly before them and a growing sense of national identity impelling consideration of national futures, Latin American leaders hesitated. What to do? Whom to believe?

Latin American political and intellectual leaders’ sometimes anguished responses to these dilemmas form the subject of The Idea of Race in Latin America. Thomas Skidmore, Aline Helg, and Alan Knight have each contributed chapters that succinctly explore various aspects of the story in Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, and Mexico. While keenly alert to the social and economic differences that distinguish one Latin American society from another, each author has also addressed common issues that Richard Graham ably draws together in a brief introduction. Written in a style that will make it accessible to the undergraduate, this book will appeal as well to the sophisticated scholar.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• 1. Introduction (Richard Graham)
• 2. Racial Ideas and Social Policy in Brazil, 1870-1940 (Thomas E. Skidmore)
• 3. Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880-1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction (Aline Helg)
• 4. Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940 (Alan Knight)
• Bibliography
• Index

Read the intrduction here.

Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

W. W. Norton & Company
August 2006
336 pages
5.5 × 8.2 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-32786-1

Edited by Chandra Prasad

With an Introduction by Rebecca Walker

With a roster of acclaimed fiction writers, Mixed shatters expectations of what it means to be multiracial.

Globally, the number of multiracial people is exploding. In 10 US states, the percentage of multiracial residents who are of school age—between 5 and 17—is at least 25 percent. In California alone, it is estimated that 15 percent of all births are multiracial or multiethnic. Despite these numbers, mixed-race people have long struggled for a distinct place on the identity map. It was only as recently as 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau began to allow citizens to check off as many racial categories as are applicable-White, African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, and Alaska Native. Previously, Americans were allowed to check off only one, leaving multiracial people invisible and unaccounted for.

Though multiracialism has recently become a popular aspect of many memoirs and novels, Mixed is the first of its kind: a fiction anthology with racial overlap as its compass. With original pieces by both established and emerging writers, Mixed explores the complexities of identity that come with being a multiracial person. Every story, crafted by authors who are themselves mixed-race, broaches multiracialism through character or theme. With contributors such as Cristina Garcia, Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Mat Johnson, Wayde Compton, Diana Abu-Jaber, Emily Raboteau, Mary Yukari Waters, and Peter Ho Davies, and an illuminating introduction by Rebecca Walker, Mixed gives narrative voice to the multiple identities of the rising generation.

The Chinese in the Caribbean

Markus Wiener Publishers
November 2004
240 pages
Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-55876-314-7; ISBN 13: 978-1-55876-314-2
Paperback ISBN 10: 1-55876-315-5; ISBN 13: 978-1-55876-315-9

Edited by

Andrew R. Wilson, Professor
Strategy and Policy Department
United States Naval War College

The history of the Caribbean is a history of migrations. The peoples of the region came as conquerors and planters, slaves and indentured laborers from all parts of the globe. Each group contributed to the social fabric, culture, and commerce of the region. The Chinese diaspora has spread Chinese people and culture around the world, including to the Caribbean, where Chinese exist both as distinct ethnic groups within Caribbean societies and as shapers of unique Caribbean cultures.

The book describes not merely the arrival and experience of Chinese in the Caribbean but also the ways in which Chinese have adapted to and altered the region. Included are the histories of Chinese people in Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, and the British West Indies, and overcame, their slow rise to economic independence and success, their contribution to art, theater, cuisine, and literature, their roles in the region’s national revolutions, their place in post-colonial politics, and the subsequent remigrations of individuals, families, and entire communitites to North America.

Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt

University Press of Mississippi
March 2010
160 pages (approx.)
6 x 9 inches, introduction, index
Printed casebinding: 978-1-60473-416-4
Ebook: 978-1-60473-418-8

Edited by:

Susan Prothro Wright, Associate Professor of American and British Literature
Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia

Ernestine Pickens Glass, Professor Emerita of English
Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia

An exploration of a great American writer’s abiding concern with the color line

Essays by Margaret D. Bauer, Keith Byerman, Martha J. Cutter, SallyAnn H. Ferguson, Donald B. Gibson, Scott Thomas Gibson, Aaron Ritzenberg,Werner Sollors, and Susan Prothro Wright.

Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt is a collection that reevaluates Chesnutt‘s deft manipulation of the “passing” theme to expand understanding of the author’s fiction and nonfiction. Nine contributors apply a variety of theories–including intertextual, signifying/discourse analysis, narratological, formal, psychoanalytical, new historical, reader response, and performative frameworks–to add richness to readings of Chesnutt’s works. Together the essays provide convincing evidence that “passing” is an intricate, essential part of Chesnutt’s writing, and that it appears in all the genres he wielded: journal entries, speeches, essays, and short and long fiction.

The essays engage with each other to display the continuum in Chesnutt’s thinking as he began his writing career and established his sense of social activism, as evidenced in his early journal entries. Collectively, the essays follow Chesnutt’s works as he proceeded through the Jim Crow era, honing his ability to manipulate his mostly white audience through the astute, though apparently self-effacing, narrator, Uncle Julius, of his popular conjure tales. Chesnutt’s ability to subvert audience expectations is equally noticeable in the subtle irony of his short stories. Several of the collection’s essays address Chesnutt’s novels, including Paul Marchand, F.M.C., Mandy Oxendine, The House Behind the Cedars, and Evelyn’s Husband. The volume opens up new paths of inquiry into a major African American writer’s oeuvre.

Half + Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural

Pantheon an imprint of Random House
1998-06-09
288 pages
ISBN: 978-0-375-70011-8 (0-375-70011-0)

Edited by Claudine C. O’Hearn

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.  These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address the difficulties of not fitting into and the benefits of being part of two worlds.  Through the lens of personal experience, they 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.

Table of Contents

• Introduction by Claudine Chiawei O’Hearn
• LOST IN PLACE by Garrett Hongo
• THE MULATTO MILLENNIUM by Danzy Senna
• THE DOUBLE HELIX by Roxane Farmanfarmaian
• CALIFORNIA PALMS by le thi diem thuy
• MORO LIKE ME by Francisco Goldman
• THE ROAD FROM BALLYGUNGE by Bharati Mukherjee
• REFLECTIONS ON MY DAUGHTER by David Mura
• LIFE AS AN ALIEN by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
• LOST IN THE MIDDLE by Malcolm Gladwell
• THE FUNERAL BANQUET by Lisa See
• A WHITE WOMAN OF COLOR by Julia Alvarez
• A MIDDLE PASSAGE by Philippe Wamba
• FOOD AND THE IMMIGRANT by Indira Ganesan
• WHAT COLOR IS JESUS? by James McBride
• POSTCARDS FROM “HOME” by Lori Tsang
• FROM HERE TO POLAND by Nina Mehta
• TECHNICOLOR by Ruben Martinez
• AN ETHNIC  TRUMP by Gish Jen
• About the Authors

Reconstructing Hybridity: Post-Colonial Studies in Transition

Rodopi
2007
330 pages
Hardback: 978-90-420-2141-9 / 90-420-2141-1

Edited by:

Joel Kuortti, Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Culture
University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Jopi Nyman, Acting Professor of English
University of Joensuu, Finland

This interdisciplinary collection of critical articles seeks to reassess the concept of hybridity and its relevance to post-colonial theory and literature. The challenging articles written by internationally acclaimed scholars discuss the usefulness of the term in relation to such questions as citizenship, whiteness studies and transnational identity politics. In addition to developing theories of hybridity, the articles in this volume deal with the role of hybridity in a variety of literary and cultural phenomena in geographical settings ranging from the Pacific to native North America. The collection pays particular attention to questions of hybridity, migrancy and diaspora.

Table of Contents

• Contributors
• Joel KUORTTI and Jopi NYMAN: Introduction: Hybridity Today
• Part One: Reconstructing Theories of Hybridity
• • David HUDDART: Hybridity and Cultural Rights: Inventing Global Citizenship
  • Sabine BROECK: White Fatigue, or, Supplementary Notes on Hybridity
  • Dimple GODIWALA: Postcolonial Desire: Mimicry, Hegemony, Hybridity
  • Jeroen DEWULF: As a Tupi-Indian, Playing the Lute: Hybridity as Anthropophagy
  • Paul SHARRAD: Strategic Hybridity: Some Pacific Takes on Postcolonial Theory
  • Andrew BLAKE: From Nostalgia to Postalgia: Hybridity and Its Discontents in the Work of Paul Gilroy and the Wachowski Brothers
• Part Two: Reading Hybridity
  • Zoe TRODD: Hybrid Constructions: Native Autobiography and the Open Curves of Cultural Hybridity
  • Sheng-Mei MA : The Necessity and Impossibility of Being Mixed-Race in Asian American Literature
  • Jopi NYMAN: The Hybridity of the Asian American Subject in Cynthia Kadohata’s The Floating World
  • Joel KUORTTI: Problematic Hybrid Identity in the Diasporic Writings of Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Andrew HAMMOND: The Hybrid State: Hanif Kureishi and Thatcher’s Britain
  • Valerie KANEKO LUCAS: Performing British Identity: Fix Up and Fragile Land
  • Samir DAYAL: Subaltern Envy? Salman Rushdie’s Moor’s Last Sigh
  • Mita BANERJEE: Postethnicity and Postcommunism in Hanif Kureishi’s Gabriel’s Gift and Salman Rushdie’s Fury
  • Index

Caught Between Cultures: Women, Writing & Subjectivities

Rodopi
2002
152 pages
Hardback: 978-90-420-1378-0 / 90-420-1378-8
Paperback: 978-90-420-1368-1 / 90-420-1368-0

Edited by:

Elizabeth Russell, Professor of Womens Studies and British Literature
University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona

The essays in this collection (on Canada, the USA, Australia and the UK) question and discuss the issues of cross-cultural identities and the crossing of boundaries, both geographical and conceptual. All of the authors have experienced cross-culturalism directly and are conscious that positions of ‘double vision’, which allow the / to participate positively in two or more cultures, are privileges that only a few can celebrate. Most women find themselves “caught between cultures”. They become involved in a day-to-day struggle, in an attempt to negotiate identities which can affirm the self and, at the same time, strengthen the ties which unites the self with others. Theoretical issues on cross-culturalism, therefore, can either liberate or constrict the /. The essays here illustrate how women’s writing negotiates this dualism through a colourful and complex weaving of words – thoughts and experiences both pleasurable and painful – into texts, quilts, rainbows. The metaphors abound. The connecting thread through their writing and, indeed, in these essays, is the concept of ‘belonging’, a theoretical/emotional composite of be-ing and longing. ‘Home’, too, assumes a variety of meanings; it is no longer a static geographical place, but many places. It is also a place elsewhere in the imagination, a mythic place of desire linked to origin.

Policies of multiculturalism can throw up more problems than they solve. In Canada, the difficulties surrounding the cross-cultural debate have given rise to a state of “messy imbroglio”. Notions of authenticity move dangerously close to essentialist identities. ‘Double vision’ is characteristic of peoples who have been uprooted and displaced, such as Australian Aboriginal writers of mixed race abducted during childhood. ‘Passing for’ black or white is full of complications, as in the case of Pauline Johnson, who passed as an authentic Indian. People with hyphenated citizenship (such as Japanese-Canadian) can be either free of national ties or trapped in subordination to the dominant culture; in these ‘visible minorities’, it is the status of being female (or coloured female) that is so often ultimately rendered invisible.

Examination of Canadian anthologies on cross-cultural writing by women reveals a crossing of boundaries of gender and genre, race and ethnicity, and, in some cases, national boundaries, in an attempt to connect with a diasporic consciousness. Cross-cultural women writers in the USA may stress experience and unique collective history, while others prefer to focus on aesthetic links and literary connections which ultimately silence difference. Journeying from the personal space of the / into the collective space of the we is exemplified in a reading of texts by June Jordan and Minnie Bruce Pratt. For these writers identity is in process. It is a painful negotiation but one which can transform knowledge into action.

Contributors
Isabel Carrera Suárez
Dolors Collellmir
Mary Eagleton
Teresa Gómez Reus
Aritha van Herk
Elizabeth Russell
María Socorro Suárez Lafuente

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• ELIZABETH RUSSELL: Introduction
• ARITHA VAN HERK: Cross-Dressed Writing in Canada
• ISABEL CARRERA SUÁREZ: Hyphens, Hybridities and Mixed-Race Identities: Gendered Readings in Contemporary Canadian Women’s Texts
• MARÍA SOCORRO SUÁREZ LAFUENTE: Creating Women’s Identity in Australian Civilization
• DOLORS COLLELLMIR: Australian Aboriginal Women Writers and the Process of Defining and Articulating Aboriginality
• ELIZABETH RUSSELL: Cross-Cultural Subjectivities: Indian Women Theorizing in the Diaspora
• TERESA GÓMEZ REUS: Weaving / Framing / Crossing Difference: Reflections on Gender and Ethnicity in American Literary and Art Practices
• MARY EAGLETON: Working Across Difference: Examples from Minnie Bruce Pratt and June Jordan
• List of Contributors

Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the “Color-Blind” Era

Univerisity of Illinois Press
October 2003
256 pages
Dimensions: 6 x 9 in. 
Illustrations: 11 Line Drawings, 11 Tables
Paper ISBN: 978-1-929011-26-1

Edited by:

Cedric Herring, Professor of Sociology
Univeristy of Illinois, Chicago

Verna M. Keith, Professor of Socilology
Florida State University

Hayward Derrick Horton, Professor of Sociology
State University of New York, Albany

A collection of essays questioning the truth of American’s color-blind society from outside and inside communities of color.

Shattering the myth of the color-blind society, the essays in Skin Deep examine skin tone stratification in America, which affects relations not only among different races and ethnic groups but also among members of individual ethnicities. Written by some of the nation’s leading thinkers on race and colorism, these essays ask whether skin tone differentiation is imposed upon communities of color from the outside or is an internally-driven process aided and abetted by community members themselves. They also question whether the stratification process is the same for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Skin Deep addresses such issues as the relationship between skin tone and self esteem, marital patterns, interracial relationships, socioeconomic attainment, and family racial identity and composition. The essays also grapple with emerging issues such as biracialism, color-blind racism, and 21st century notions of race.

Counseling Multiple Heritage Individuals, Couples and Families

American Counseling Association
2009
235 pages
Order Number: 72883
ISBN: 978-1-55620-279-7

Written and edited by:

Richard C. Henriksen Jr., Associate Professor of Education
Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Derrick A. Paladino, Assistant Professor of Counseling
Department of Graduate Studies
Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida

This book examines the strengths of and the challenges facing multiple heritage individuals, couples, and families and offers a framework for best practice counseling services and interventions specifically designed to meet their needs. Topics covered include historical and current racial classification systems and their effects; identity development; transracial adoptions; and counseling strategies for children, adolescents, college students, adults, couples and families, and GLBT individuals. Poignant case studies illustrate important concepts and techniques throughout the book, and chapter review questions provide a starting point for lively classroom discussion.

Table of Contents

• Foreword. Patricia Arredondo
• Prologue. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Preface xiii
• About the Authors
• About the Contributors
• Chapter 1: History of Racial Classification. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 2: History of Antimiscegenation. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 3: Identity Development in a Multiple Heritage World. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 4: Counseling Multiple Heritage Children. Henry L. Harris
• Chapter 5: Counseling Multiple Heritage Adolescents. Michael Maxwell and Richard C. Henriksen Jr.
• Chapter 6: Counseling Multiple Heritage College Students. Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 7: Counseling Multiple Heritage Adults. Derrick A. Paladino and Richard C. Henriksen Jr.
• Chapter 8: Counseling Multiple Heritage Couples and Families. Kelley R. Kenney and Mark E. Kenney
• Chapter 9: Navigating Heritage, Culture, Identity, and Adoption: Counseling Transracially Adopted Individuals and Their Family. Amanda L. Baden, Laura A. Thomas, and Cheri Smith
• Chapter 10: Intersecting Socially Constructed Identities With Multiple Heritage Identity. Andrew C. Benesh and Richard C. Henriksen Jr.
• Chapter 11: Bridging the Margins: Exploring Sexual Orientation and Multiple Heritage Identities. Tiffany Rice and Nadine Nakamura
• Chapter 12: Multiple Heritage Case Studies, Analysis, and Discussion
  • What’s in a Name? An International Adoption Case Study. L. DiAnne Borders and Christine E. Murray
  • The Case of Michael: Searching for Self-Identity. Nancy J. Nishimura
  • Family Case Study: Identity Lost. Jose A. Villalba and Derrick A. Paladino
  • Working With a Multiple Heritage Couple: A Couple’s Case Study. Mary G. Mayorga
  • The Balancing Act of Multiple Heritage Family Counseling. Leigh H. de Armas and Amanda K. Bailey
  • Working With a Multiple Heritage Client With Indigenous Roots. Janet Windwalker Jones
• Appendix
• Resources
• Index

Read the front matter of the book here.