This is a longish one. With “mixedness” in the news a LOT lately, for obvious reasons related to the background of one presidential candidate, I thought I’d weigh in.
As a huge Danzy Senna fan, who felt so seen while reading both Caucasia and New People, I am positively giddy with anticipation about her newest novel, Colored Television, which was released by Riverhead Books on 9/3.* Senna is a rare author who centers biracial-ness, not in defiance of Blackness or Whiteness or monoracial-ness, but as itself: an amalgamation of perspectives and racial being in a world that always asks you to choose, then argues with you about your choices, pressing you to justify what you are, why you are, and has a multitude of thoughts on what you represent.
I was so delighted to read Joumana Khatib’s recent New York Times interview with Senna. What jumped out at me the most—what compelled me to open a new document on my laptop and begin this very essay—was this small excerpt:
After decades of publishing, Senna knows to brace for the inevitable question: Why is she still writing about mixed-race characters?
“That question literally never gets asked of any other group,” she said. “Nobody asks Sally Rooney, ‘Why are you still writing about the Irish?’ Nobody asks Jonathan Franzen, ‘Why are you writing about white people again?’
“If you’re mixed, something really interesting is revealed to me in that question: It reveals that they don’t think of you as a people. They think of you as a predicament.”
I learned the truth of this as an aspiring novelist. When I submitted my first novel for publication, entering the query trenches, as it were—and please know that this first novel of mine was supremely undercooked and should not have gone anywhere near any agent’s inbox (but maybe more on that in another post)—I received this feedback from several agents who were generous enough in suggesting ways to make the book more marketable:
Why did the protagonist have to be biracial rather than simply Black, which would streamline the plot. If the main character was going to have an eating disorder, and feel torn between academia and the ballet world, then making her mixed—Black and Jewish?—well that was too complicated. She had enough problems. It was a given that the latter, mixedness, was a problem, “a predicament,” as Senna says. That was in 2006.
Things have changed, including the way we write and read about race, as well as whom we read with regard to race. The #ownvoices/#weneeddiversebooks movement pushed the industry to hire diverse editors, to amplify stories about marginalized people written by those same marginalized writers. (And yes, those movements, like any other, come with wildly swinging pendulums and wild outrage. But that’s for another post.)
I, for one, am grateful to Senna for continuing to write about mixed race characters. Her books—of which I’ve read three so far: novel, memoir, novel, with the newest on my bedstand—are brilliant, and for someone like me, as #own a #voice as there is. Because when you are reader of mixed race, it is a rare thing to encounter your likeness in fiction. Senna prefers the word mulatto which, despite its negative past—referring to mules who cannot procreate—is specific and direct and describes people like us, who have a Black parent and a white one. I’ll admit, mulatto is a lot easier to write than Black/White/Biracial. When you are a writer of mixed race, there is nothing more validating than reading the work of another mixed writer who refuses to be a racial asterisk.
I can only speak for myself of course. While we are both children of Black fathers and white mothers, Senna and I represent opposite ends of the mulatto color spectrum. She is more white presenting to the untrained eye (think Jennifer Beal) while I am Black presenting (think Jordan Peele). Neither of us is especially ambiguous looking in the manner most often expected of biracial people (see Gugu Mbatha-Raw). Non-mulattos have different reactions to us when we out ourselves. When Senna reveals that she is Black, it alarms those who assume she is white. On the other end, when I mention that I am biracial—with a white Jewish mother and Black father—as opposed to monoracial Black, I get an interesting range of responses, depending on the audience.
It’s complicated for us both for different reasons. While I claim Jewishness along with Blackness as part of my ethnic identity, I cannot and will not claim whiteness in the same way Senna can claim Blackness. If you’re white you’re all-white in this country, while if you are Black, and a descendent of the American age of enslavement, you undoubtedly have some European ancestry, even if none of your direct relatives is white. But when I reveal that I am biracial, it removes me—in the eyes of some—from the Blackness that appears to be the whole story. For white people, it sets me apart from other Black people in a slightly cringy way. For many Black people, the distinction feels unnecessary because I am seen as Black. If I make the clarification, it suggests that I am rejecting a part of myself rather than actively embracing the whole thing.
For me, being biracial—mulatto—is not about what I look like, it’s what I am culturally. My story includes Jewishness and Blackness. I was raised by a Jewish mother and a Black father, whose marriage was strong and lasted 45 years, until my father’s death. There are pieces of both cultures that I missed, but the present pieces of each culture combined to make the picture of our family whole in its own way. Different from if I had been adopted by white parents. Different from how it would have been to grow up with a Black mother and Jewish father. Different from how it would have been to have two parents of the same background. Different. My own. My truth. (That’s me with Mom and Dad in our living room. I was four.)
What I have long loved about being a novelist is the possibility of centering an alternative identity to what may be expected. In Embers on the Wind, my debut, there are interracial couples and biracial children, but I did not lean heavily into my own experience of being biracial. Instead I focused on the evolving plight of being Black in white spaces, whether it was the big house on a plantation or a 21st century music together class in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Embers on the Wind is a novel-in-stories about a house—an Underground Railroad Safehouse turned 21st Century Airbnb—that bore witness to the meaning of American Black womanhood. It was a story inspired by something very real and personal that I needed to get out.
When I pitched Embers to my agent—whom I signed with after writing a very white YA novel about ballet that died on sub—I’ll admit I’d retained the belief that it might be easier to sell a debut that didn’t have a mixed main character. So I pushed aside drafts of three other novels I had going, each of which had biracial protagonists, in favor of Embers, an expansion of a short story I had published. The stories in Embers have main characters who are Black, Biracial and white, Gentile and Jewish, but it is a book that centers Blackness. To write it, I leaned into my Black identity, the part of myself that needed to speak at the time, and the words flowed. (I have a few #ownvoices, that sometimes speak in opposition to one another, other times in unison.)
We all come in parts, roles, aspects of ourselves that come forward at different times, in different guises. But they congeal to form our cores. Mine is an inclusive Biracial/Black/white/Jewish identity. My normal.
In Mirror Me, the novel I have coming out in December (preorder link here!) I center mixedness. I am doing the same in Birchcrest Hills (my novel-in-progress that, should it ever see the light of publication, will indubitably be called something else). Black/White/Jewish is my default setting, the lens through which I filter the world, The place from whence I write.
Wishing you moments of hope and clarity this week.
Lisa
*A caveat: when I link to books in this newsletter, I generally link to the Amazon site out of convenience so that people can learn about the book. However, I encourage you to actually buy these books at your local independent bookstores. Even if you cannot find a book on the shelf, you can order it from these booksellers. We must support our indies!