{"id":54257,"date":"2017-06-22T14:29:17","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T14:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54257"},"modified":"2017-06-22T14:29:17","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T14:29:17","slug":"the-old-problems-of-new-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54257","title":{"rendered":"The Old Problems of \u201cNew People\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Old Problems of \u201cNew People\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

New Republic<\/a>
\n2017-06-22<\/p>\n

Morgan Jerkins<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nCourtesy Riverhead Books.<\/small><\/p>\n

Danzy Senna’s<\/a> new novel examines the ambivalent privileges of passing<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Danzy Senna, New People, A Novel<\/em><\/a> (New York: Riverhead, 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is 1996 in Brooklyn<\/a>. The crime rate is on the decline, artists are fleeing Manhattan<\/a> and its staggering rents for neighborhoods such as DUMBO<\/a>, Williamsburg<\/a>, and Greenpoint<\/a>, immigrants are flocking to the borough, and you could still buy a brownstone<\/a> for under $500,000. This is also the year of the Fugees\u2019s<\/a> iconic album The Score<\/em><\/a>, Lil Kim\u2019s<\/a> Hardcore<\/em><\/a>, Foxy Brown\u2019s<\/a> Ill Na Na<\/em><\/a>, and Jay-Z\u2019s<\/a> Reasonable Doubt<\/em><\/a>. The era was one of creativity, movement, and rapid innovation, making it fertile ground for the racial dynamics explored in Danzy Senna\u2019s<\/a> highly anticipated third novel, New People<\/em><\/a>. In a decade when the country had witnessed the Rodney King beating<\/a>, the Los Angeles Riots<\/a>, and the O.J. Simpson trial<\/a>, racial tension were at an all-time high. This is not the time to try and escape one\u2019s race. But there are Black Americans whose trauma from decades of racism leads them to cultivate themselves into a world of the light-skinned elite, and a world where they hope they will be safer, more compatible with the American Dream<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the world in which we meet Maria Pierce and Khalil Mirsky, two light-skinned, mixed race black people who want it all and are on track to get it: a Brooklyn brownstone, a wedding at a lighthouse in Martha\u2019s Vineyard<\/a> with nouveau soul food<\/a>, a dog named Thurgood, and two children \u201cwith skin the color of burnished leather\u201d and \u201chair the color of spun gold\u201d named Indigo and Cheo. Maria and Khalil met at Stanford, where they fell in love over conversations about interracial dating and misogyny in hip-hop, Giovanni\u2019s Room<\/em><\/a> and Cosby<\/em><\/a> episodes, chicken and waffles. Now, Khalil, a part-time technology consultant, is about to take advantage of the dot-com boom by creating an online community of black \u201cmodern tribalism\u201d with his friend, while Maria spends her days finishing up her dissertation on the Jonestown Massacre<\/a>. It\u2019s perfect. Until it isn\u2019t…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Danzy Senna’s new novel examines the ambivalent privileges of passing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,6462,20],"tags":[5645,18346,21091],"class_list":["post-54257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-danzy-sennas","tag-morgan-jerkins","tag-new-republic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54259,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54257\/revisions\/54259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}