{"id":54710,"date":"2017-08-01T18:29:57","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T18:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54710"},"modified":"2017-08-01T18:50:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T18:50:26","slug":"we-wear-the-mask-15-stories-about-passing-in-america-edited-by-brando-skyhorse-lisa-page-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54710","title":{"rendered":"We Wear The Mask: 15 Stories About Passing in America (edited by Brando Skyhorse &#038; Lisa Page) [Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/book-reviews\/brando-skyhorse\/we-wear-the-mask\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>We Wear The Mask: 15 Stories About Passing in America<em> (edited by Brando Skyhorse &amp; Lisa Page) [Review]<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kirkus Reviews<\/a><br \/>\n2017-07-24<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/book-reviews\/brando-skyhorse\/we-wear-the-mask\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/d1ldy8a769gy68.cloudfront.net\/180\/978\/080\/707\/898\/3\/9780807078983.jpg\" width=\"200\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page (eds.), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54069\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>We Wear the Mask: 15 Stories about Passing in America<\/em><\/a> (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Writers explore how and why the phenomenon of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">passing<\/a>\u201d both shocks and fascinates.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brando_Skyhorse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Skyhorse<\/a> (English\/Indiana Univ.; <em>Take This Man<\/em>, 2014, etc.) and <a href=\"https:\/\/english.columbian.gwu.edu\/lisa-page\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Page<\/a> (Creative Writing and English\/George Washington Univ.) assemble a collection of 15 authentic narratives about how people attempt to \u201cwin access to the specific life they want, the ultimate form of assimilation, the pure embodiment of the American Dream,\u201d by assuming to be a class or race they are inherently not. Both of the editors know this particular form of \u201creinvention\u201d well and contribute their perspectives in highly personal essays. Skyhorse, who received his name from his mother \u201cafter my Mexican biological father abandoned us,\u201d opens with reflections on how he, as a Mexican-American with the surname Ulloa, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">passed himself as an American Indian<\/a> on his college applications. Page chronicles how her black great-grandmother passed for white in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mississippi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mississippi<\/a> in order to get a college education. The editors agree that \u201ceach of us sometimes employs misdirection to let someone jump to a different conclusion about who we are.\u201d Racial passing also plays a key role in Achy Obejas\u2019 tender recollection of how her Cuban-born father reinvented his \u201cThird World soul\u201d to create a better future for his family in America and in Marc Fitten\u2019s excavation of his familial roots as an urgent preventative tool against diseases predisposed to Asian culture, which his great-grandfather went to great lengths to blur&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire review <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/book-reviews\/brando-skyhorse\/we-wear-the-mask\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writers explore how and why the phenomenon of \u201cpassing\u201d both shocks and fascinates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,5,8,6462,20],"tags":[27050,27404,4729],"class_list":["post-54710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-brando-skyhorse","tag-kirkus-reviews","tag-lisa-page"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54710","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=54710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54711,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54710\/revisions\/54711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}