{"id":54706,"date":"2017-08-01T18:09:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T18:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54706"},"modified":"2017-08-01T18:09:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T18:09:52","slug":"saga-of-biracial-elite-couple-offers-a-fresh-take-on-identity-race-and-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54706","title":{"rendered":"Saga of biracial elite couple offers a fresh take on identity, race, and class"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saga of biracial elite couple offers a fresh take on identity, race, and class<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Boston Globe<\/a>
\n2017-07-28<\/p>\n

Rebecca Steinitz<\/strong><\/a>, Globe Correspondent<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nDanzy Senna<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

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

It is 1996 in gentrifying Brooklyn<\/a>, and Maria, the less-than-heroic heroine of \u201cNew People<\/a>,\u2019\u2019 Danzy Senna\u2019s<\/a> sharp new novel, perches on the cusp of triumphant adulthood. Almost finished with her dissertation, \u201can ethnomusicology of the Peoples Temple<\/a>\u201d in Jonestown, Guyana<\/a>, she is planning her Martha\u2019s Vineyard<\/a> wedding to aspiring Internet entrepreneur Khalil, her college boyfriend and perfect match: \u201cShe is the one he has been waiting for his whole life .\u00a0.\u00a0. He is the one she needs, the one who can repair her .\u00a0.\u00a0. Their skin is the same shade of beige.\u201d<\/p>\n

Products of \u201cthe Renaissance of Interracial Unions\u201d at the end of the \u201960s, the two are avatars of the \u201ctangle of mud-colored New People who have come to carry the nation \u2014 blood-soaked, guilty of everything of which it has been accused \u2014 into the future,\u201d so \u201cperfect\u201d they have been asked to star in \u201cNew People,\u2019\u2019 the documentary…<\/p>\n

…Like Senna\u2019s previous two novels \u201cCaucasia<\/a>\u2019\u2019 and \u201cSymptomatic<\/a>,\u2019\u2019 \u201cNew People\u2019\u2019 explores the fraught social and emotional world of the biracial elite. This is Senna\u2019s world \u2014 \u201cCaucasia\u2019\u2019 was built on the foundation of her 1970s Boston <\/a>childhood, and Maria and Khalil attend Stanford in the early \u201990s, as she did…<\/p>\n

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

Danzy Senna, “New People, A Novel” (New York: Riverhead, 2017)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,20],"tags":[4072,1340,27403,5579],"class_list":["post-54706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-boston-globe","tag-danzy-senna","tag-rebecca-steinitz","tag-the-boston-globe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54706","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=54706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54707,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54706\/revisions\/54707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}