Mixed: Multiracial College Students Tell Their Life Stories - Softcover

"Much of the most insightful work on multiracial identity and multiracial experience has been drawn from multiracial individuals themselves. In addition, the institution of higher education provides a context where identities are particularly under investigation and where the drama of race continues to play out. In Mixed, editors Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, and Christina Gomez have brought together both of these traditions to encourage the next wave of research on multiracial experiences and urge the deeper conversations about race that we desperately need." -- David L. Brunsma, Virginia Tech, co-author of Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America "With this collection, Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny and Christina Gomez have done a significant service for anyone interested in an exploration of the complexity of issues facing multiracial persons. The 12 essays-six by women, six by men-written by students at Dartmouth College over the course of a 10-week academic terma provide an intimate first-person and appropriately diverse look at the multiple forces impacting the process of developing a multiracial identity.... This book's 12 essays provide important case material that can help promote the kind of thoughtful conversation necessary to move us forward as a diverse people." -- Tim Hatfield * Journal of Moral Education * "[A] valid and necessary addition to the field.... Mixed sheds light on pre-college, as well as collegiate experiences, which may be influential in the identities and lives of multiracial students. Furthermore, the 12 essays in the book explore aspects of multiracial students' experiences that have yet to be extensively researched, including the influences of familial dynamics, intersections of additional social identities, and the environments and communities in which one grows up.... The 12 essays are enchanting and informative, providing a much needed text for engaging multiraciality in higher education." -- Jessica C. Harris * Journal of College Student Development *

Mixed presents engaging and incisive first-person experiences of what it is like to be multiracial in what is supposedly a postracial world. Bringing together twelve essays by college students who identify themselves as multiracial, this book considers what this identity means in a reality that occasionally resembles the post-racial dream of some and at other times recalls a familiar world of racial and ethnic prejudice.Exploring a wide range of concerns and anxieties, aspirations and ambitions, these young writers, who all attended Dartmouth College, come from a variety of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Unlike individuals who define themselves as having one racial identity, these students have lived the complexity of their identity from a very young age. In Mixed, a book that will benefit educators, students, and their families, they eloquently and often passionately reveal how they experience their multiracial identity, how their parents' race or ethnicity shaped their childhoods, and how perceptions of their race have affected their relationships.