29 personal essays exploring mixed identity, belonging, family, racism, community and the paradoxical ways of being in the world
“An unprecedented ode to the wide range of mixed-root experiences and what is shared across difference. Required reading for anyone who has ever been asked what are you? I want everyone to read this.”
—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season
Multiracial people are everywhere—but so often their stories are oversimplified, overlooked, or left out of the narrative altogether. Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity & Both/And Belonging collects 29 voices from different generations, geographies, and mixes of race and ethnicity. Combining powerful personal narratives with community-oriented perspectives, Mixed Roots explores themes of inherited belief systems, racism, whiteness, migration, language, trauma, ancestry, and healing.
When society so often wants to divide us into either/or categories, Mixed Roots reminds us that multiracial experiences are complex and can be told in different ways. This anthology engages with the familiar questions of “what are you?” or “where do you belong?” with nuance, dispelling the idea that there is ever one right way to identify. In a time of increased polarization, Mixed Roots invites more of us to examine the historical legacies and harm caused by racism within ourselves and our communities.
With compelling, intimate, lyrical and conversational prose, the voices in Mixed Roots honor the realities we’ve inherited around race, while pushing against old assumptions— encouraging readers to embrace paradox and non-binary belonging.
Editor’s Note
Introduction: Who Are We? / Anne Liu Kellor
PART 1: NAMING: ABSENCES, LOSSES, QUESTIONS, AND OPENINGS
Error Messages /
Rebecca Delacruz-Gunderson
Please Don’t Ask Me What I Am /
Savala Nolan
The Friendly City /
Grace M. Cho
Lessons in Lack /
Alayna Erhart
Goddess Braids /
Leslie V. Nguyen-Okwu
Learning a Second Language /
Samantha Chagollan
Regeneration of the Tongue /
Donna Miscolta
Con Lai /
Jeannie Messer
PART 2: INTEGRATING: PARTS OF THE WHOLE
The Miracle /
Malaka Gharib
Where My Worlds Collide /
Taressa Stovall
Where Do You Belong: A Standardized Test /
Elizabeth Su
Love, Blood, and Fractions: Finding Forever Under Long-Term Genocidal Policies /
Jordynn L. Paz
Dear Biracial/Multiracial/Mixed Black Girl /
Faith Adiele
Black, White, and Living in the Gray /
Steve Majors
Turkish 101 /
Jeremy O. Simer
Of Tattoos, Exile, and Finding a Home /
Rabha Ashry
Son, Grandfather /
Ben Zaidi
PART 3: RECKONING: ANCESTRAL LEGACIES AND COMMUNITIES
Off-White: Notes from the Border of Race /
Leticia H. Lopez
Like Your Mother /
Dawn Noel Chen
Frida Kahlo’s Bridge /
Jenny Sadre-Orafai
Grandma in Blackface /
Shannon Luders-Manuel
Ghost Kingdoms, Mirrors, and Margins /
Hei Kyong Kim
Other, Together /
Keliko K. M. Adams
Raising Responsibly: Parenting as a Multiracial Person with Light Skin and/or White Passing Privilege /
Joemy Ito-Gates
Dear Parts of the Whole /
Miyo Tubridy
To a Beloved Child /
Elisabeth Vasquez Hein
Belonging in the In-Between: The Dignity of Ambiguity and the Power of Shapeshifting /
Karine Bell and Dr. Leticia Nieto
Time Goes in a Circle /
Terra Trevor
Afterword: Solidarity Across Difference /
Anne Liu Kellor
Appendix: A Brief History of Racialized Ideas, Laws, Segregation, and Mixing in the US /
Anne Liu Kellor
Recommended Resources
Acknowledgments
About the Editor
Contributor Bios
Credits
Notes
—Library Journal
“I was moved beyond words from the first pages of this book and by every essay that followed. An unprecedented ode to the wide range of mixed-root experiences and what is shared across difference. Required reading for anyone who has ever been asked what are you? I want everyone to read this.”
—Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season
“Each writer within this anthology boldly charts their own path to belonging. But the true magic forms in the broader chorus, where voices who have never felt a ‘we’ write themselves into collective lineage. Refusing to be defined by categories that have never encompassed the complexity of who we are, Mixed Roots anchors itself in both history and gratitude for the ones whose stories paved the way for us, while opening new paths of possibility for the ones who will follow. This anthology is a gift for anyone who lives within the both/and.”
—Tessa Hulls, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and artist of Feeding Ghosts
“I adore this book! HUMAN BEINGS—we are all at home in these pages, making new friends as infinitely rich in variations as we have always felt. Why fear the mixtures? Life becomes so much more delicious, as these wonderful voices describe, when we celebrate them.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, award-winning poet and author of Sidekick
“Evocative, nuanced, and brimming with heart, Mixed Roots illuminates the mixed-race experience in all its kaleidoscopic wonder. This collection of essays straddles identities and worlds and yet is grounded in deeply universal truths. It takes the familiar quandary of never feeling ‘enough’ and offers something far less commonplace: In these stories, I felt like I’d come home.”
—Daniel Tam-Claiborne, author of Transplants
“I read Mixed Roots with wondrous recognition of how our collective awareness can forge future connection out of historical displacement. By harnessing the tides of identity, Mixed Roots creates what editor Anne Liu Kellor calls ‘spirals of resonance’ to disrupt the binaries of one-versus-the-Other and create space for Both/And belonging. Karine Bell and Dr. Leticia Nieto wrote that such belonging ‘is not a static claim but an active, dynamic practice’ that helps us ‘step more fully into our transformative liberation commitments.’ Recognizing that we embody the continuum, this anthology is guided by Faith Adiele’s vital equation: ‘You+Are=Enough.’ As Rebecca Delacruz-Gunderson wrote, Mixed Roots is ‘the start of a conversation and the end of an assumption.’”
—Kristen Millares Young, author of Desire Lines and Subduction
“Mixed Roots meets individuals at all points of the journey to understand one’s multiracial identity and root out internalized racism and anti-Blackness. For mixed-race readers, this book is a quiet moment and a reprieve from a world that defines who you are and what that means by the most rigid of parameters. Anne Liu Kellor has curated with care a collection of voices eager to join the growing conversation about the fluid nature of race and identity.”
—Minda Honey, author of The Heartbreak Years
“This anthology is for us—the both/and, the defiantly uncategorizable. A chorus of multiracial voices—including writers of nonwhite mixed heritage and transracial adoptees—moves through absences and questions, toward the weaving together of countless parts, into the reckoning of ancestry and belonging. Identity here is plural, nonbinary, and radically whole. This book IS a beautiful community.”
—Susan Kiyo Ito, author of I Would Meet You Anywhere
“Whatever confusion or ache you’ve experienced, residing in the land of in-between, you will find camaraderie within these pages. An existential homecoming for the soul.”
—Stephanie Elizondo Griest, author of Mexican Enough and Art Above Everything
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