Description
Book Synopsis2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
In Shades of Gray Molly Littlewood McKibbin offers a social and literary history of multiracialism in the twentieth-century United States. She examines the African American and white racial binary in contemporary multiracial literature to reveal the tensions and struggles of multiracialism in American life through individual consciousness, social perceptions, societal expectations, and subjective struggles with multiracial identity.
McKibbin weaves a rich sociohistorical tapestry around the critically acclaimed works of Danzy Senna, Caucasia (1998); Rebecca Walker, Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001); Emily Raboteau, The Professor’s Daughter (2005); Rachel M. Harper, Brass Ankle Blues (2006); and Heidi Durrow, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (2010). Taking into account the social history of racial classification and the literary history o
Trade Review
"In this groundbreaking study of multiracialism, McKibbin . . . explores recent criticism and contemporary autobiography and fiction. . . . The author understands the political implications of her subject, and she explores President Obama's role in the reformation of concepts of mixed-race individuals. This provocative book is cautious in its claims, acknowledging that current awareness is still in its early stages and has not yet been fully incorporated into the nation's general consciousness."—T.P. Riggio, Choice
“Shades of Gray deepens our understanding of how race and multiracial identities are evolving and enriches efforts to frame these evolving identities in theoretically sound and productive ways.”—Carlton D. Floyd, associate professor of English at the University of San Diego
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Race and Mixed Race in the United States
1. “What Are You, Anyway?”: The Social Context of Racial Identity
2. Wonders of the Invisible Race: Negotiating Whiteness
3. “Black Like Me”: Negotiating Blackness
4. Mixed Ethnicity: Multiracialism as Multicultural Identity
Conclusion: The (Continuing) Work of Multiracial Literature
Notes
Bibliography
Index
