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The raw and gripping memoir of a Black physician who confronts his past mistakes and relationships as he learns to find his own path forward At first glance, Anthony Chin-Quee looks like a traditional success story: a smart, ambitious kid who grew up to become a board-certified otolaryngologist—an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. Yet the truth is more complicated. As a self-described “not white, mostly Black, and questionably Asian man,” Chin-Quee knows that he doesn't fit easily into any category. Growing up in a family with a background of depression, he struggled with relationships, feelings of inadequacy, and a fear of failure that made it difficult for him to forge lasting bonds with others. To repair that, he began his own unflinching examination of what it means to be both a physician and a Black man today. What saved him and his sanity was not medicine but storytelling: by sharing stories from his life and career, Chin-Quee learned how powerful the truth can be in helping to forgive yourself and others as you chart a new way forward. By turns harrowing and hilarious, honest and human, I Can't Save You is the fascinating true story of how looking within can change you and your life for the better.ContentsPrologue 1ONE: Chin-Quee, M.D. 3TWO: A-Side—Success• 42THREE: B-Side—The Fall 80FOUR: You 160FIVE: Fear of Flying 176SIX: Rainbow Connection 212SEVEN: Y'ain't (k)no(w) 222EIGHT: Fatherhood 285NINE: Eulogy 334Acknowledgments 353

At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father's abandonment, which left her feeling unworthy of a man's love and of white protection. Raised by her working-class African American mother and grandmother, Zook was taught not to count on anyone, especially men. Men leave. Men disappoint. In adulthood she became a feminist, activist, and “race woman” journalist in New York City. Despite her professional success, something was missing. Coming to terms with her identity was a constant challenge.The Girl in the Yellow Poncho is Zook's coming-of-age tale about what it means to be biracial in America. Throughout, she grapples with in-betweenness while also facing childhood sexual assault, economic insecurity, and multigenerational alcoholism and substance abuse on both the Black and white sides of her family. Her story is one of strong Black women—herself, her cousin, her mother, and her grandmother—and the generational cycles of oppression and survival that seemingly defined their lives.Setting out on an inner journey that takes her across oceans and continents, Zook tells the story of a little girl who never gives up on love, even long after it seems to have been destroyed. In the end she triumphs, reconciling with her father and mother to create the family of her dreams through forgiveness and sheer force of will. A testament to the power of settling into one's authentic identity, this book tells a story of a daughter's lifelong yearning, a mother's rediscovery of lost love, and the profound power of atonement and faith to heal a broken family.

Silver Medalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards! Silver Medalist in the Midwest Book Awards! From a childhood marked by loneliness and want, M. Roy Wilson forged an extraordinary life of accomplishment and acclaim. His accomplishments include the presidencies of four universities, dean of two medical schools, and deputy director of one of the National Institutes of Health's twenty-seven Centers and Institutes. Through this inspiring and deeply personal story of struggle and success, Wilson shares insights gleaned through his life experiences, many of which helped others reach their highest potential as students, faculty, physicians and people. Born to a Japanese mother and Black father, much of M. Roy Wilson's childhood in Japan was marked by parental absence, sexual abuse, extended periods as a runaway, physical confrontations and frequent moves. He was often forced to play the role of caregiver to his younger sister, and together they grew to depend on each other for support until their teenage years. Under the guidance of his high school English teacher, Wilson turned his life around and obtained an MD from Harvard Medical School. His adult life as a physician was ironically beset with significant health challenges, including diagnoses of cardiomyopathy that rendered him uninsurable, a potentially blinding eye disease, and cancer that at first was thought to be terminal. Having developed a veneer of invulnerability as a child, he kept these medical diagnoses a secret until now. Like the plum tree that blooms even during dark and dreary times, Wilson overcame his childhood challenges and later, his health issues, to achieve distinction in medicine, higher education, and global health research. The journey to this unlikely outcome is an engrossing tale of outside forces that shape racial and cultural identity, the importance of mentorship and friendship, and the lasting impact of an unstable and often heartbreaking family dynamic.

Bright: A Memoir, the first full-length essay collection from acclaimed poet Kiki Petrosino, is a work of lyric nonfiction, offering glimpses of a life lived between cultural worlds. “Bright,” a slang term used to describe light-skinned people of interracial American ancestry, becomes the starting point for an extended meditation on the author's upbringing in a mixed Black and Italian American family. Alternating moments of memoir, archival research, close reading and reverie, this work contemplates the enduring, deeply personal legacies of enslavement and racial discrimination in America. Situated at the luminous crossroads where public and private histories collide, Bright asks important questions about love, heritage, identity and creativity.

A captivating memoir of a biracial boy growing up in Washington, D.C., abandoned by his birth parents, and lovingly raised by a woman with deep emotional scars from her upbringing in the segregated South.The unforgettable memoir Black Sheep opens with a middle-aged Ray Studevent returning to Washington, D.C., to his “momma,” Lemell Studevent. She didn't give birth to him, but she is the woman who raised him. She is the woman who stood by him through thick and thin. She is the woman who saved his life. But now in her late 80s, Lemell is lost to her Alzheimer's disease. On most days, she has no idea who she is, no recollection of the remarkable life she has lived. Every once in a while, she remembers small fragments of people, places, and things but she doesn't know how all of these pieces fit together. At night, she is often haunted by nightmares of growing up in the segregated South, of evil men with blue eyes peering through slits in their hooded robes. Frightened by Ray, this stranger, this white man with his piercing blue eyes, she threatens to shoot him. Trying not to get swept up in his own buried, decades-old feelings of abandonment, Ray knows he must work to regain her trust as he thinks back to how far they both have come. Ray Studevent grew up between two worlds. Born to a white, heroin-addicted mother and a black, violent, alcoholic father, the odds were stacked against him from day one. When his parents abandoned him at the age of five, after living in a world no child should experience, he was saved from the foster-care system by his father's uncle Calvin, who offered him stability and a loving home. When Calvin tragically died two years later, it was up to his widow Lemell to raise Ray. But this was no easy task. Lemell grew up in the brutality of segregated Mississippi, emotionally scarred and justifiably resenting white people. Now, she must confront these demons as she raises a mixed-race child—white on the outside, black on the inside—on the eastern side of the Anacostia River, the blackest part of the blackest city in America. This is a time of heightened racial tension, not long after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the D.C. race riots. There are guidelines if you are black, different rules if you are white, but only mixed messages for mixed-race children who must fight for acceptance as they struggle to find their identity. As Dr. My Haley, the widow of Roots author Alex Haley, wrote in the Foreword for Black Sheep, “Ray's pathway to manhood came not through the people who taught him what to do, but through the woman who taught him how to be, even as she learned for herself how to be.” At a time when we are all reexamining the complex issues of race, identity, disenfranchisement, and belonging, this compelling true story shows us what is possible when we trust our hearts and follow the path of love.

LGBTQ advice columnist John Paul Brammer writes a “wise and charming” (David Sedaris) memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey from a queer, mixed-race kid in America's heartland to becoming the “Chicano Carrie Bradshaw” of his generation. “A master class of tone and tenderness.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editors'Choice) “Should be required reading.” —Los Angeles TimesThe first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer “Papi” was on the gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for “hey, handsome.” But then it happened again and again…and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi? Soon, this racialized moniker became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column “¡Hola Papi!,” launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere—and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first—what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early twenties? Sometimes the best advice comes from looking within, which is what JP does in his column and book—and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and more than a few laughs. In this hilarious, tenderhearted book, JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America's heartland, while attempting to answer some of life's most challenging questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he's out of the closet? Questions we've all asked ourselves, surely. ¡Hola Papi! is “a warm, witty compendium of hard-won life lessons,” (Harper's Bazaar) for anyone—gay, straight, and everything in between—who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world.

LIFE Barack Obama chronicles the former President's life, from his early years in Chicago to meeting Michelle and his rise in politics to the White House and beyond, as he continues to be prolific today at the age of 60. Complete with stunning, intimate photography, this special edition is a must-have for history buffs and fans of American politics.

A revealing portrait of a young Black man asking questions about self-discovery and belonging – long before he became one of the most important voices in America. The son of a white American mother and a Black Kenyan father, Obama was born in Hawaii, where he lived until he was six years old, when he moved with his mother and stepfather to Indonesia. At twelve, he returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. Obama brings readers along while facing the challenges of high school and college, living in New York, becoming a community organiser in Chicago, and travelling to Kenya. Through these experiences, he forms an enduring commitment to leadership and justice. Via the lens of his relationships with his family – the mother and grandparents who raised him, the father he knows more as a myth than as a man, and the extended family in Kenya he meets for the first time – Obama examines the complicated truth of his father's life and legacy and comes to embrace his own divided heritage. On his journey to adulthood from a humble background, he forges his own path by trial and error while staying connected to his roots. Barack Obama is determined to lead a life of purpose, service and authenticity. This powerful memoir will inspire readers to reflect on both where they come from and where they are capable of going.

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, this “gorgeous” (The New York Times, Editors'Choice) and deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu tells the “incredible story” (Malala Yousafzai) about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through. “In Aftershocks, Nadia Owusu tells the incredible story of her young life. How does a girl—abandoned by her mother at age two and orphaned at thirteen when her beloved father dies—find her place in the world? This memoir is the story of Nadia creating her own solid ground across countries and continents. I know the struggle of rebuilding your life in an unfamiliar place. While some of you might be familiar with that and some might not, I hope you'll take as much inspiration and hope from her story as I did.” —MALALA YOUSAFZAI ​ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 SELECTED BY VULTURE, TIME, ESQUIRE, NPR, AND VOGUE!Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia's nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was thirteen. After his passing, Nadia's stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo. With these and other ruptures, Nadia arrived in New York as a young woman feeling stateless, motherless, and uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together. “A magnificent, complex assessment of selfhood and why it matters” (Elle), Aftershocks depicts the way she hauled herself from the wreckage of her life's perpetual quaking, the means by which she has finally come to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own hand. “Full of narrative risk and untrammeled lyricism” (The Washington Post), Aftershocks joins the likes of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and William Styron's Darkness Visible, and does for race identity what Maggie Nelson does for gender identity in The Argonauts.

Un relato cautivador y personal de la historia según se va forjando, del presidente que nos ha inspirado a creer en el poder de la democracia. En este extraordinario primer volumen de sus esperadas memorias presidenciales, Barack Obama narra la historia de su sorprendente evolución de ser un joven en busca de su identidad a convertirse en líder del mundo occidental, describiendo con increíble detalle tanto su formación política como los momentos cumbre del primer período de su histórica presidencia, una época de una gran conmoción y de profunda transformación. Obama invita a sus lectores a un viaje cautivador que va desde sus más tempranas aspiraciones políticas, pasando por la decisiva victoria de Iowa que demostró el poder del activismo comunitario, hasta la emotiva noche del 4 de noviembre de 2008, cuando fue elegido el presidente número 44 de los Estados Unidos, convirtiéndose en el primer afroamericano en ocupar el más alto cargo de la nación. El autor reflexiona sobre la presidencia ofreciendo un análisis único y profundo tanto del alcance como de los límites que tiene el poder presidencial, y brinda una visión singular sobre el funcionamiento de la política bipartidista de los Estados Unidos y la diplomacia internacional. Obama lleva a los lectores al interior de la Oficina Oval y de la Sala de Crisis de la Casa Blanca, a Moscú, Cairo, y Beijing, entre otros lugares. Somos espectadores de su pensamiento mientras compone su gabinete, lidia con una crisis financieraglobal, mide a Vladimir Putin, vence obstáculos aparentemente insuperables para lograr la aprobación del Affordable Care Act, se enfrenta a generales sobre la estrategia de Estados Unidos en Afganistán, aborda la reforma de Wall Street, responde al devastador derrame de petróleo de Deepwater Horizon, y autoriza la Operación Neptune Spear que termina con la muerte de Osama bin Laden. Una tierra prometida es excepcionalmente íntimo y reflexivo, narra la apuesta de un hombre con la historia, la fe de un organizadorcomunitario puesto a prueba ante el mundo. Obama expone el difícil equilibrio entre hacer campaña política como afroamericano -cargando con las expectativas de una generación ilusionada por ideales como «esperanza y cambio»- y enfrentar el desafío moral de tomar decisiones de gran trascendencia. Obama habla con franqueza de la fuerte oposición que sufrió tanto en su país como en el extranjero, revela cómo la vida en la Casa Blanca afectó a su esposa y a sus hijas, y no teme confesar sus inseguridades ni decepciones.Sin embargo, nunca duda de su convicción de que, dentro del gran experimento americano, el progreso siempre es posible. Este libro escrito magistralmente refleja la convicción de Barack Obama de que la democracia no es un regalo divino, sino algo cimentado en la empatía y el común acuerdo, que construimos juntos día a día. Reseña: «Barack Obama es un gran escritor. [...] es placentero leer, frase por frase, la prosa magnífica sobre los lugares, el detalle granular y vívido.» Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New York Times «Lo que le distingue no es solo la extensión y el detallismo, sino lo que la escritora nigeriana Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describió en su crítica del libro como'un interrogatorio salvaje a sí mismo'; una reflexión sobre los verdaderos motivos que impulsan sus decisiones.» Agencia EFE «Una tierra prometida [...] alberga un auténtico festín de confesiones, historias, anécdotas y divertidos perfiles de los grandes de la política europea y mundial de las últimas dos décadas.» Daniel Arjona, El Confidencial

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLENAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

In the linked essays that make up her debut collection, This Is One Way to Dance, Sejal Shah explores culture, language, family, and place. Throughout the collection, Shah reflects on what it means to make oneself visible and legible through writing in a country that struggles with race and maps her identity as an American, South Asian American, writer of color, and feminist. This Is One Way to Dance draws on Shah's ongoing interests in ethnicity and place: the geographic and cultural distances between people, both real and imagined. Her memoir in essays emerges as Shah wrestles with her experiences growing up and living in western New York, an area of stark racial and economic segregation, as the daughter of Gujarati immigrants from India and Kenya. These essays also trace her movement over twenty years from student to teacher and meditate on her travels and life in New England, New York City, and the Midwest, as she considers what it means to be of a place or from a place, to be foreign or familiar.Shah invites us to consider writing as a somatic practice, a composition of digressions, repetitions—movement as transformation, incantation. Her essays—some narrative, others lyrical and poetic—explore how we are all marked by culture, gender, and race; by the limits of our bodies, by our losses and regrets, by who and what we love, by our ambivalences, and by trauma and silence. Language fractures in its attempt to be spoken. Shah asks and attempts to answer the question: How do you move in such a way that loss does not limit you? This Is One Way to Dance introduces a vital new voice to the conversation about race and belonging in America.

The Emmy Award-winning legal journalist and co-host of The View Sunny Hostin chronicles her journey from growing up in a South Bronx housing project to becoming an assistant U.S. attorney and journalist in this powerful memoir that offers an intimate and unique look at identity, intolerance, and injustice.“What are you?” has followed Sunny Hostin from the beginning of her story, as she grew up half Puerto Rican and half African-American raised by teenage parents in the South Bronx. Escaping poverty and the turbulence of her early life through hard work, a bit of luck and earning academic scholarships to college and law school, Sunny immersed herself in the workings of the criminal justice system. In Washington, D.C., Sunny became a federal prosecutor, soon parlaying her wealth of knowledge of the legal system into a successful career as a legal journalist. She was one of the first national reporters to cover Trayvon Martin's death—which her producers erroneously labeled “just a local story.” Today, an inescapable voice from the top echelons of news and entertainment, Sunny uses her platform to advocate for social justice and give a voice to the marginalized. In her signature no-holds-barred, straight-up style, Sunny opens up and shares her intimate struggles with fertility and personal turmoil, and reflects on the high-stakes cases and stories she worked on as a prosecutor and during her time at CNN, Fox News, ABC and The View. Timely, poignant, and moving, I Am These Truths is the story of a woman living between two worlds, and learning to bridge them together to fight for what's right.

An honest and courageous examination of what it means to navigate the in-between Cole has heard it all before—token, bougie, oreo, Blackish—the things we call the kids like him. Black kids who grow up in white spaces, living at an intersection of race and class that many doubt exists. He needed to get far away from the preppy site of his upbringing before he could make sense of it all. Through a series of personal anecdotes and interviews with his peers, Cole transports us to his adolescence and explores what it's like to be young and in search of identity. He digs into the places where, in youth, a greyboy's difference is most acutely felt: parenting, police brutality, Trumpism, depression, and dating, to name a few. Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World asks an important question: What is Blackness? It also provides the answer: Much more than you thought, dammit.

Las memorias inspiradoras, pertinentes y provocadoras de Ilia Calderón—la primera presentadora afrolatina en un noticiario hispano de preeminencia en los Estados Unidos—acerca de seguir sus sueños, superar prejuicios y acoger su identidad.De niña, Ilia Calderón se sentía como una típica niña colombiana. En el Chocó, la provincia afrolatina donde se crio, tu piel podría ser de cualquier tono y aún serías considerado familia. Pero cuando dejó su comunidad para asistir a la escuela secundaria y la universidad en Medellín, todo cambió. A partir de ese momento, resolvió volverse “sorda” al racismo, decidida a superar el prejuicio, incluso cuando le repetían que los trabajos prominentes de presentador de noticias no eran para ella. Cuando un giro del destino le presentó una oportunidad única en la cadena noticiera Telemundo en Miami, estaba emocionada de comenzar una nueva vida —e identidad— en los Estados Unidos, donde las fronteras raciales, creía, se habían disuelto hace mucho tiempo y la igualdad era la regla. Sin embargo, se enfrentó a otro tipo de discriminación racial como una mujer inmigrante de color que le hablaba en español a la comunidad latinx cada vez más marginada. En los últimos nueve años, Ilia ha reportado desde la primera línea de eventos históricos como el huracán Katrina, los terremotos en México, las elecciones presidenciales de los Estados Unidos de 2016 y la crisis pandémica del COVID-19. Ahora, Ilia corre el telón de los altibajos de su extraordinaria vida y carrera. Desde luchas internas personales hasta problemas profesionales analiza cómo construyó su identidad en medio de la violencia con carga de motivos raciales y la polarización política. Sobre la marcha, ella muestra cómo ha superado el miedo y enfrentado el odio de cara a cara, todo en nombre de crear un mundo mejor para su joven hija, Anna.

An inspiring, timely, and conversation-starting memoir from the barrier-breaking and Emmy Award–winning journalist Ilia Calderón—the first Afro-Latina to anchor a high-profile newscast for a major Hispanic broadcast network in the United States—about following your dreams, overcoming prejudice, and embracing your identity.As a child, Ilia Calderón felt like a typical girl from Colombia. In Chocó, the Afro-Latino province where she grew up, your skin could be any shade and you'd still be considered blood. Race was a non-issue, and Ilia didn't think much about it—until she left her community to attend high school and college in Medellín. For the first time, she became familiar with horrifying racial slurs thrown at her both inside and outside of the classroom. From that point on, she resolved to become “deaf” to racism, determined to overcome it in every way she could, even when she was told time and time again that prominent castings weren't “for people like you.” When a twist of fate presented her the opportunity of a lifetime at Telemundo in Miami, she was excited to start a new life, and identity, in the United States, where racial boundaries, she believed, had long since dissolved and equality was the rule. Instead, in her new life as an American, she faced a new type of racial discrimination, as an immigrant women of color speaking to the increasingly marginalized Latinx community in Spanish. Now, Ilia draws back the curtain on the ups and downs of her remarkable life and career. From personal inner struggles to professional issues—such as being directly threatened by a Ku Klux Klan member after an interview—she discusses how she built a new identity in the United States in the midst of racially charged violence and political polarization. Along the way, she'll show how she's overcome fear and confronted hate head on, and the inspirational philosophy that has always propelled her forward.

A moving memoir exploring one family's legacy of African Americans with American Indian roots. Finalist, 2024 American Legacy Book Awards, Autobiography/Memoir Black Indian, searing and raw, is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Alice Walker's The Color Purple meets Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony—only, this isn't fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, alcoholism, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan's memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family's legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society's ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance. Buchanan was raised as a Black woman, who grew up hearing cherished stories of her multi-racial heritage, while simultaneously suffering from everything she (and the rest of her family) didn't know. Tracing the arduous migration of Mixed Bloods, or Free People of Color, from the Southeast to the Midwest, Buchanan tells the story of her Michigan tribe—a comedic yet manically depressed family of fierce women, who were everything from caretakers and cornbread makers to poets and witches, and men who were either ignored, protected, imprisoned, or maimed—and how their lives collided over love, failure, fights, and prayer despite a stacked deck of challenges, including addiction and abuse. Ultimately, Buchanan's nomadic people endured a collective identity crisis after years of constantly straddling two, then three, races. The physical, spiritual, and emotional displacement of American Indians who met and married Mixed or Black slaves and indentured servants at America's early crossroads is where this powerful journey begins. Black Indiandoesn't have answers, nor does it aim to represent every American's multi-ethnic experience. Instead, it digs as far down into this one family's history as it can go—sometimes, with a bit of discomfort. But every family has its own truth, and Buchanan's search for hers will resonate with anyone who has wondered'maybe there's more than what I'm being told.'

An essential resource for readers analyzing the presidency of Barack Obama, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the life of 44th president of the United States.Barack Obama stated,'Our destiny is not written for us. It is written by us.'Was the former president talking about himself and his rise to the American presidency?On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, the first African American to be elected to this office. Former President Obama's politics of unity appealed to many segments of American society. When Obama became president, the United States faced challenges at home and abroad. Internationally, the country was stalled in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Domestically, the country faced a financial and banking crisis, and poverty was on the rise. Undaunted by these colossal challenges, former President Obama noted,'We did not come to fear the future. We came to shape it.'Barack Obama: A Life in American History discusses the life of Barack Obama chronologically and discusses his post-presidential life. Readers of all levels with an interest in Barack Obama, politics, political parties, political ideology, presidential elections, government, and the U.S. presidency will find this book compelling.

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year“Straight's memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women's stories... The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco ChronicleIn the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self–proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close–knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne's female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post–slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight's mother–in–law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan's family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.”“Certain books give off the sense that you won't want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight's new memoir, In the Country of Women... Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb... Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment.” ––Los Angeles Times

“A defining chronicle of strength and spirit” (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world—without a road map to guide her. This memoir “should be required reading for your 20s” (Cosmopolitan).A few months before her twentieth birthday, Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body after her teenage transition, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their relationship serve as a backdrop for Janet's progression through all the universal growing pains—falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life. Fueled by her dreams and an inimitable drive, Janet makes her way through New York City intent on building a career in the highly competitive world of magazine publishing—within the unique context of being trans, a woman, and a person of color. Hers is a timely glimpse about the barriers many face—and a much-needed guide on how to make a way out of no way. Long before she became one of the world's most respected media figures and lauded leaders for equality and justice, Janet learned how to advocate for herself before becoming an advocate for others. In this “honest and timely appraisal of what it means to be true to yourself” (Booklist), Surpassing Certainty offers an “exquisitely packaged gift of her experiences...that signals something greater” (Bitch Magazine).

Catherine Cater's infectious love of ideas inspired students, colleague and friends. A distinguished teacher and intellectual specializing in English literature and philosophy, Dr. Cater faced barriers of race and gender when she entered the academic world and moved to the North. She elevated the level of scholarship at universities and their communities in both the South and North, most notably North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, where her long career left an indelible mark on the academic stature of the institution.

A unique and exquisitely wrought story of one multiracial woman's journey to discover and embrace herself in a family that sought to deny her black heritage, Sil Lai Abrams shares her story in Black Lotus: A Woman's Search for Racial Identity—an account that will undoubtedly ignite conversation on race, racial identity, and the human experience.Author and activist Sil Lai Abrams was born to a Chinese immigrant mother and a white American father. Out of her family, Sil Lai was the only one with a tousle of wild curls and brown skin. When she asked about her darker complexion, she was given vague answers. At fourteen, the man she knew her entire life as her birth-father divulged that Abrams was not his biological child, but instead the daughter of a man of African descent who didn't know she existed. This shocking news sparked a quest for healing that would take her down the painful road to reclaim her identity despite the overt racism in her community and her own internalized racism and self-hatred. Abrams struggled with depression, abuse, and an addiction that nearly destroyed her. But eventually she would leave behind the shame over her birthright and move toward a celebration of her blackness. In Black Lotus, Abrams takes you on her odyssey filled with extreme highs and lows and the complexities of not only the black experience, but also the human one. This vivid story reexamines everything you think you know about racial identity while affirming the ability of the human spirit to triumph over tragedy. Ultimately, Black Lotus shines a light on the transformative power of truth and self-acceptance, and the importance of defining your personal identity on your own terms.

New York Times Bestseller • Winner of the 2015 WOMEN'S WAY Book Prize • Goodreads Best of 2014 Semi-Finalist • Books for a Better Life Award Finalist • Lambda Literary Award Finalist • Time Magazine “30 Most Influential People on the Internet” • American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book In her profound and courageous New York Times bestseller, Janet Mock establishes herself as a resounding and inspirational voice for the transgender community—and anyone fighting to define themselves on their own terms.With unflinching honesty and moving prose, Janet Mock relays her experiences of growing up young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America, offering readers accessible language while imparting vital insight about the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of a marginalized and misunderstood population. Though undoubtedly an account of one woman's quest for self at all costs, Redefining Realness is a powerful vision of possibility and self-realization, pushing us all toward greater acceptance of one another—and of ourselves—showing as never before how to be unapologetic and real.

Love Imagined is an American woman's unique struggle for identity.'Joining the long history of women of color fighting to claim literary space to tell our stories, Sherry Quan Lee shares her truth with fierce courage and strength in Love Imagined.... Quan Lee crafts a riveting tale of Minnesota life set within the backdrop of racial segregation, the Cold War, the sexual revolution while navigating it all through the lens of her multi-layered identities. A true demonstration of the power of an intersectional perspective.'--Kandace Creel Falcon, Ph.D., Director of Women's and Gender Studies, Minnesota State University, Moorhead'Love Imagined: this fascinating, delightful, important book. This imagining love, this longing for love. This poverty of No Love, this persistent racism, sexism, classism, ageism. The pain these evils cause the soul...This is an important document of a mixed-race contemporary woman, a memoir about her family lineages back to slavery, back to China, back to early Minneapolis, and about the struggle of finding herself in all of these.'--Sharon Doubiago, author of My Father's Love'When I read Sherry's story [Love Imagined], I recognized feelings and meanings that mirrored mine. I felt a sense of release, an exhale, and I knew I could be understood by her in a way that some of my family and friends are unable to grasp, through no fault of their own. It's the Mixed experience. Sherry Lee's voice, her story, will no doubt touch and heal many who read it.'--Lola Osunkoya, MA Founder of Neither/Both LLC, Mixed-Race Community Building and Counseling Learn more at www.SherryQuanLee.com From Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com BIO002000 Biography & Autobiography: Cultural Heritage SOC028000 Social Science: Women's Studies - General SOC043000 Social Science: Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies

Bullet-shattered glass clatters onto his baby bed; he wakes and cries out into darkness. Does he remember this? Or remember being told? Regardless, he feels it, and will feel it again, bomb bay wind buffeting his eighteen-year-old body a mile above an old volcano's jagged debris, and yet again, staring at photos of Korean orphans, huddled homeless in a blizzard after a bombing in which, at twenty-five, he'd refused an order to join. It is through such prisms of the past that Ralph Salisbury's life unfolds, a life that, eighty years in the making, is also the life of the twentieth century. Winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, So Far, So Good is a sometimes strange, sometimes lyrical, and often humorous attempt by an inveterate storyteller to recount “just things as they were.”The survivor of a lightning strike, car and plane mishaps, explosions, bullets, a heart attack, cancer, and other human afflictions, Salisbury wonders: “Why should anyone read this?” The book itself resoundingly answers this question not merely with its sheer eventfulness but also in the prodigious telling. Salisbury takes us from abject poverty in rural Iowa during the Great Depression, with a half Cherokee father and an Irish American mother, through war and peace and protest to the freedom and solace of university life; and it is in the end (so far) so good.

In Barack Obama, David Maraniss has written a sweeping narrative which reveals the real story of Obama's beginnings: child of a black man from Luoland and a white woman born in Kansas. He charts the fortunes of the two disparate families, polar opposites in every way, which produced these two extraordinary individuals, who met briefly in Hawaii, never cohabited, and married only to legitimize the child born of that union. At the heart of Obama's psyche and his political beliefs - and therefore his presidency - is his life-long struggle to understand the extreme duality of his identity. Maraniss explores his extraordinary journey from a mixed race boy raised by white grandparents in laid-back Hawaii to an African America with a burning political vision and vocation. Barack Obama contains a wealth of new material. Maraniss reveals here previously unpublished love letters written by Obama as a young man in a search of an identity: black or white, writer or a man who could lead. He also includes the journal entries of Obama's first significant (white) girlfriend, which chart their intense relationship and the moment when young Barack realized that he must leave everything behind him and set out for Chicago in order to'become'an African American. The story wrought here is one of fierce ambition, survival, and love.

From top CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O'Brien comes a highly personal look at her biggest reporting moments from Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the devastating Haiti earthquake, and to the historic 2008 U.S. elections and high profile interviews with everyday Americans. Drawing on her own unique background as well as her experiences at the front lines of the most provocative issues in today's society, and from her work on the acclaimed documentaries Black in America and Latino in America, O'Brien offers her candid, clear-eyed take on where we are as a country and where we're going.What emerges is both an inspiring message of hope and a glimpse into the heart and soul of one of America's most straight-talking reporters.

From the author of the bestselling Caucasia, a sad, revealing memoir of the mixed-race marriage of her parents, and the very different American origins that brought them together and pulled them apart.When Danzy Senna's parents got married in 1968, they seemed poised to defy history. They were two brilliant young American writers from wildly divergent backgrounds—a white woman with a blue-blood Bostonian lineage and a black man, the son of a struggling single mother and an unknown father. They married in a year that seemed to separate the past from the present; together, these two would snub the histories that divided them and embrace a radical future. When their marriage disintegrated eight years later, it was, as one friend put it,'the ugliest divorce in Boston's history'—a violent, traumatic war that felt all the more heartrending given the hopeful symbolism of their union.Decades later, Senna looks back not only at her parents'divorce but beyond it, to the opposing American histories that her parents had tried so hard to overcome. On her mother's side of the family she finds—in carefully preserved documents—the chronicle of a white America both illustrious and shameful. On her father's she discovers, through fragments and shreds of evidence, a no less remarkable history. As she digs deeper into this unwritten half of the story, she reconstructs a long buried family mystery that illuminates her own childhood. In the process, she begins to understand her difficult father, the power and failure of her parents'union, and, finally, the forces of history.Where Did You Sleep Last Night? is at once a potent statement of personal identity, a challenging look at the murky waters of American ancestry, and an exploration of narratives—the narratives we create and those we forget. Senna has given us an unforgettable testimony to the paradoxes—the pain and the pride—embedded in history, family, and race.

Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative traces Linda Tate's journey to rediscover the Cherokee-Appalachian branch of her family and provides an unflinching examination of the poverty, discrimination, and family violence that marked their lives. In her search for the truth of her own past, Tate scoured archives, libraries, and courthouses throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, and Missouri, visited numerous cemeteries, and combed through census records, marriage records, court cases, local histories, old maps, and photographs. As she began to locate distant relatives — fifth, sixth, seventh cousins, all descended from her great-greatgrandmother Louisiana — they gathered in kitchens and living rooms, held family reunions, and swapped stories. A past that had long been buried slowly came to light as family members shared the pieces of the family's tale that had been passed along to them.Power in the Blood is a dramatic family history that reads like a novel, as Tate's compelling narrative reveals one mystery after another. Innovative and groundbreaking in its approach to research and storytelling, Power in the Blood shows that exploring a family story can enhance understanding of history, life, and culture and that honest examination of the past can lead to healing and liberation in the present.

An international bestseller which has sold over a million copies in the UK, Dreams From My Father is a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking big questions about identity and belonging. The son of a Black African father and a white American mother, Barack Obama recounts an emotional odyssey, retracing the migration of his mother's family from Kansas to Hawai'i, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father's life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Written nearly fifteen years before becoming president, Dreams from My Father is an unforgettable read. It illuminates not only Obama's journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history and what makes us who we are.

June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring white actress, and James “Stump” Cross, a well-known black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by black friends when she was four years old and could no longer pass as white, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race. Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June's astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive. This is an inspiring testimony to the endurance of love between mother and daughter, a child and her adoptive parents, and the power of community.

“Tell anyone who asks that you're half-black and half-white, just like David Hasselhoff from Knight Rider.”–Angela's mother “Love has no color,” insist Angela Nissel's parents, but does it have a clue? In this candid, funny, and poignant memoir, Angela recounts growing up biracial in Philadelphia–moving back and forth between black inner-city schools and white prep schools–where her racial ambiguity and doomed attempts to blend in dog her teen years. Once in college, Angela experiments with black activism (hoping to find clarity in extremism), capitalizes on her “exotic” look at a strip club, and ends up with a major case of the blues (aka, a racial identity problem). Yet Angela is never down for the count. After moving to Los Angeles, she discovers that being multiracial is anything but simple, especially in terms of dating and romance. By turns a comedy of errors and a moving coming-of-age chronicle, Mixed traces one woman's unforgettable journey to self-acceptance and belonging. Praise for Mixed'Mixed is a hilarious must-read for anyone searching for the enchanting path to self-discovery. Angela Nissel's precise account of living the mixed race experience not only hit home with me, but the journey is deliciously enlightening and heart-rending at the same time. It's a journey well worth taking.'­—Halle Berry“I love Angela Nissel's writing. Reading Mixed was like getting a letter from a best friend I forgot I had. How ironic that a book written by someone who felt like no one'got'her will surely be one of those rare books everyone gets- black, white, both, neither. Hilarious, sweet, and honest, Mixed is the perfect read if you've ever felt like the one standing on the outside­—and let's face it, who hasn't?'­—Jill Soloway, author of Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants'If David Sedaris was a straight biracial female, this is the book he'd write. This book is so funny I've already started telling people I helped Angela write it.'­—Bill Lawrence, creator of Scrubs “Nissel is humorous, poignant, and proud yet also empathetic and generous as she recounts her constant struggle to answer the perennial question persons of mixed race seem required to ask of themselves in our society–where do I fit in?.... All readers stand to learn from her account.”—Booklist “Colorful anecdotes, marvelous dialogue and a thoughtful narrative make this memoir a delight.”­—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The United States Census 2000 presents a twenty-first century America in which mixed-race marriages, cross-race adoption, and multiracial families in general are challenging the ethnic definitions by which the nation has historically categorized its population. Addressing a wide spectrum of questions raised by this rich new cultural landscape, Mixing It Up brings together the observations of ten noted voices who have experienced multiracialism first-hand. From Naomi Zack's'American Mixed Race: The United States 2000 Census and Related Issues'to Cathy Irwin and Sean Metzger's'Keeping Up Appearances: Ethnic Alien-Nation in Female Solo Performance,'this diverse collection spans the realities of multiculturalism in compelling new analysis. Arguing that society's discomfort with multiracialism has been institutionalized throughout history, whether through the'one drop'rule or media depictions, SanSan Kwan and Kenneth Speirs reflect on the means by which the monoracial lens is slowly being replaced. Itself a hybrid of memoir, history, and sociological theory, Mixing It Up makes it clear why the identity politics of previous decades have little relevance to the fluid new face of contemporary humanity.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE'S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARSIn this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted... moving and candid... This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride's The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams's Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America's racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative... Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama's writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I've ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author's journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman

The complex issues of race and politics in nineteenth-century Texas may be nowhere more dramatically embodied than in three generations of the family of Norris Wright Cuney, mulatto labor and political leader. Douglas Hales explores the birthright Cuney received from his white plantation-owner father, Philip Cuney, and the way his heritage played out in the life of his daughter Maud Cuney-Hare. This intergenerational study casts light on the experience of race in the South before Emancipation, after Reconstruction, and in the diaspora that eventually led cultural leaders of African American heritage into the cities of the North.Most Texas history books name Norris Wright Cuney as one of the most influential African American politicians in nineteenth-century Texas, but they tell little about him beyond his elected positions. In The Cuneys, Douglas Hales not only fills in the details of Cuney's life and contributions but places him in the context of his family's generations.A politically active plantation owner and slaveholder in Austin County, Philip Cuney participated in the annexation of Texas to the United States and supported the role of slavery and cotton in the developing economy of the new state. Wealthy and powerful, he fathered eight slave children whom he later freed and saw educated. Hales explores how and why Cuney differed from other planters of his time and place.He then turns to the better-known Norris Wright Cuney to study how the black elite worked for political and economic opportunity in the reactionary period that followed Reconstruction in the South. Cuney led the Texas Republican Party in those turbulent years and, through his position as collection of customs at Galveston, distributed federal patronage to both white and black Texans. As the most powerful African American in Texas, and arguably in the entire South, Cuney became the focal point of white hostility, from both Democrats and members of the “Lily White” faction of his own party. His effective leadership won not only continued office for him but also a position of power within the Republican Party for Texas blacks at a time when the party of Lincoln repudiated African Americans in many other Southern states. From his position on the Galveston City Council, Cuney worked tirelessly for African American education and challenged the domination of white labor within the growing unions.Norris Wright Cuney's daughter, Maud, who was graced with a prestigious education, pursued a successful career in the arts as a concert pianist, musicologist, and playwright. A friend of W. E. B. Du Bois, she became actively involved in the racial uplift movement of the early twentieth century. Hales illuminates her role in the intellectual and political “awakening” of black America that culminated in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He adroitly explores her decision against “passing” as white and her commitment to uplift.Through these three members of a single mixed-race family, Douglas Hales gives insight into the issues, challenges, and strengths of individuals. His work adds an important chapter to the history of Texas and of African Americans more broadly.

In the late 1820s Sarah and Angelina Grimké traded their elite position as daughters of a prominent white slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina, for a life dedicated to abolitionism and advocacy of women's rights in the North. After the Civil War, discovering that their late brother had had children with one of his slaves, the Grimké sisters helped to educate their nephews and gave them the means to start a new life in postbellum America. The nephews, Archibald and Francis, went on to become well-known African American activists in the burgeoning civil rights movement and the founding of the NAACP. Spanning 150 eventful years, this is an inspiring tale of a remarkable family that transformed itself and America.

Suffused with longing, this rueful, passionate memoir about an adopted woman's search for her birth parents explores themes of race and family. Catherine McKinley was one of only a few thousand African American and bi-racial children adopted by white couples in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Raised in a small, white New England town, she had a persistent longing for the more diverse community that would better understand and encompass her. In an era shaped by the rhetoric of Black Power and Black Pride, McKinley's coming of age entailed her own detailed investigation into her birth history, a search complicated by the terms of a closed adoption that denied her all knowledge of the circumstances of her birth. THE BOOK OF SARAHS traces McKinley's own time of revelations: after a five-year period marked by dead ends and disappointments, she finds her birth mother and a half-sister named Sarah, the name that was originally given to her. When she locates her birth father and meets several of his eleven other children she begins to see the whole mosaic of her parentage-African American, WASP, Jewish, Native American-and then is confronted with a final revelation that threatens to destabilize all she has uncovered. At the center of the narrative is McKinley's angry passion for her two mothers and her quest for self-acceptance in a world in which she seems to herself to be always outside the bounds of social legitimacy. In telling of her struggles both to fit into and to defy social conventions, McKinley challenges us to rethink our own preconceptions about race, identity, kinship, loyalty, and love. Catherine McKinley is the author of The Book of Sarahs and Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she has taught Creative Nonfiction, and a former Fulbright Scholar in Ghana, West Africa. She lives in New York City. McKinley writes beautifully in this debut memoir, never resorting to sentimentality or easy emotions within this tangled web of emotional and family secrets. - Publishers Weekly'In recounting her long and arduous journey in search of her birth parents, McKinley (Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing) draws us into a page-turning treasure hunt. Along the way she skillfully describes her upbringing as a black (or so she believed) child adopted by a white family during the 1960s, her tenacious efforts to winnow information out of the bureaucratic agency that handled her adoption and her often startlingly candid reactions to each new revelation about her background. Ultimately, she discovered that her parentage includes African American, WASP, Jewish, and Native American forbears. The multiple Sarahs of the title are just another confounding bit of information in this painful, funny, and very human memoir about race and family. In the end, the treasure McKinley seems to have discovered is her own independent self. Recommended for all libraries.'- Library Journal In elegant, original prose that springs from a mind and heart at turns spirited and pensive, Catherine McKinley tells her dramatic story with defiant candor, precocious wisdom, and courageous sensitivity. - Sarah Saffian, Author of Ithaka: A Daughter s Memoir of Bing Found

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her parents divorced, leaving her a lonely only child ferrying between two worlds that only seemed to grow further apart, Rebecca was no longer sure what she represented. In this book, Rebecca Leventhal Walker attempts to define herself as a soul instead of a symbol&#151and offers a new look at the challenge of personal identity, in a story at once strikingly unique and truly universal.

During an interview for a faculty position, a senior professor asked Kevin Johnson bluntly,'How did you get to be a Mexican?'And, a young woman at a Harvard Law School dinner party inquired,'Are you one of those people whose high school friends are all dead from gangs and stuff?'The son of a Mexican American mother and an Anglo father, Professor Johnson has spent his life in the borderlands between racial identities. In this insightful book, he uses his experiences as a mixed Latino Anglo to examine issues of diversity, assimilation, race relations, and affirmative action in the contemporary United States. Johnson also grew up in the borderlands between classes. He spent his childhood with his mother, first on welfare and then with a racist working-class stepfather. As an adolescent, he moved to his father's home in a predominantly upper-middle-class suburb. His educational experiences too extend from a racially mixed elementary school to an all-white high school, and from Berkeley to Harvard Law School. From this vantage point, he analyzes the intersection of race and class in the United States. This book looks not just at the question'Who is a Latino?'but also at the question of where persons of mixed Anglo-Latino heritage fit into the racial dynamics of the United States. Professor Johnson's mother was an ardent assimilationist who classified herself as'Spanish'; her failure to become a part o f middle America led her into depression and eventually mental illness. Her son has woven not just her experiences and his own, but also those of friends and relatives, into a complex and moving story of one white/brown man's search for identity.