Danzy Senna: New People

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

He [John C. Minkins] said the Negro need have no objection to absolutely prohibitive laws against miscegenation, as they would give him a far wider range of matrimonial choice than any other race on earth, since he could have all the thirty-second degree Negroes and more than 1,100,000 others, ranging from half white to thirty-one thirty-seconds white, from which to choose, adding, “The range is wide enough and attractive enough to satisfy the most adventurous and exacting among us.” He was not disposed to be disturbed by legitimate miscegenation and its ultimate effects, as they would take care of themselves as they had done ever since the present European Caucasian races sprang from the Negro’s ancestors, the Euro-Africans.

“John C. Minkins on Race Purity,” The Indianapolis Recorder: A Weekly Newspaper Devoted the to Best Interest of the Negroes (May 7, 1910), page 1, columns 4-5. http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/IRecorder/id/18654/rec/1.

Danzy Senna: New People

Danzy Senna: New People

Bookworm
KCRW FM
Santa Monica, California
2017-08-24

Photo by Christopher Ho

Danzy Senna relishes kicking political correctness to the curb. She believes that irony and humor are more effective than earnestness when writing about race and gender. In her novel New People, Senna takes on both the comedy and seriousness of race. Her mixed-race trickster heroine plays what she thinks is a funny prank on her mixed-race boyfriend – a racist prank that mushrooms into a full-scale drama on their 90s Stanford University campus… and that is just the beginning.

Listen to the entire episode (00:28:29) here.

Tags: Danzy Senna, KCRW, KCRW FM

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2017 at 22:50Z and is filed under Audio, Interviews, Media Archive, Passing, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Danzy Senna: New People

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