Books about Biracial from Amazon.com

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..
Price: $8.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This superb, rational, and highly readable volume answers a deeply felt need. Parents and educators alike have long struggled to understand what meanings race might have for the very young, and for ways to insure that every child grows up with a healthy sense of self. Marguerite Wright handles sensitive issues with consummate clarity, practicality, and hope. Here we have an indispensable guide that will doubtless prove a classic.
--Edward Zigler, sterling professor of psychology and director, Yale Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy

A child's concept of race is quite different from that of an adult. Young children perceive skin color as magical--even changeable--and unlike adults, are incapable of understanding adult predjudices surrounding race and racism. Just as children learn to walk and talk, they likewise come to understand race in a series of predictable stages.

Based on Marguerite A. Wright's research and clinical experience, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla teaches us that the color-blindness of early childhood can, and must, be taken advantage of in order to guide the positive development of a child's self-esteem.

Wright answers some fundamental questions about children and race including:
* What do children know and understand about the color of their skin?
* When do children understand the concept of race?
* Are there warning signs that a child is being adversely affected by racial prejudice?
* How can adults avoid instilling in children their own negative perceptions and prejudices?
* What can parents do to prepare their children to overcome the racism they are likely to encounter?
* How can schools lessen the impact of racism?
With wisdom and compassion, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla spells out how to educate black and biracial children about race, while preserving their innate resilience and optimism--the birthright of all children..
Price: $8.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As we approach the twenty-first century, biracialism and biculturalism are becoming increasingly common.  Skin color and place of birth are no longer reliable signifiers of one's identity or origin.  Simple questions like What are you? and Where are you from? aren't answered--they are discussed.  These eighteen essays, joined by a shared sense of duality, address the difficulties of not fitting into and the benefits of being part of two worlds.  Through the lens of personal experience, they offer a broader spectrum of meaning for race and culture.  And in the process, they map a new ethnic terrain that transcends racial and cultural division..
Price: $7.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Originally a derogatory label derived from the Hawaiian word for half, Hapa is now being embraced as a term of pride by many people of Asian or Pacific Rim mixed-race heritage. Award-winning film producer and artist Kip Fulbeck has created a forum in word and image for Hapas to answer the question they're nearly always asked: "What are you?" Fulbeck's frank, head-on portraits are paired with the sitters' own statements of identity. A work of intimacy, beauty, and powerful self-expression, Part Asian, 100% Hapa is the book Fulbeck says he wishes he had growing up. An introduction to the rest of the world and an affirmation for Hapas themselves who now number in the millions it offers a new perspective on a rapidly growing population..
Price: $6.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When it first appeared in 1767, The Female American was called a "sort of second Robinson Crusoe; full of wonders " Indeed, The Female American is an adventure novel about an English protagonist shipwrecked on a deserted isle, where survival requires both individual ingenuity and careful negotiations with visiting local Indians. But what most distinguishes Winkfield's novel is her protagonist, a woman who is of mixed race. Whereas the era's popular novels typically featured women in the confining contexts of the home and the bourgeois marriage market, Winkfield's novel portrays an autonomous and mobile heroine living alone in the wilds of the New World, independently interacting with both Native Americans and visiting Europeans. The Female American is one of the earliest novelistic efforts to articulate an American identity, and more specifically to investigate what that identity might promise for women, while at the same time, the novel also engages with questions of what a British identity might look like refracted through the experiences of a new world.

While purportedly written by Unca Eliza Winkfield, Burnham has been able to find no historical record that such a person existed, and while the name set her on a number of leads that seemed quite in keeping with the thread of the novel, all led ultimately to dead ends. Accordingly, there is a discussion of authorship issues, and the Broadview edition also contains excerpts from English and American source texts.

This is the only edition available..
Price: $12.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Archaeologist Faye Longchamp and her friend, Joe Wolf Mantooth, have traveled to Neshoba County, Mississippi, to help excavate a site near Nanih Waiya, the sacred mound where tradition says the Choctaw nation was born. When farmer Carroll Calhoun refuses their request to investigate an ancient Native American mound, Faye and her colleagues are disappointed, but his next action breaks their hearts: he tries to bulldoze the huge relic to the ground.

Faye and Joe rush to protect history--with their bodies, if necessary. Soon the Choctaws arrive to defend the mound and the farmer's white and black neighbors come to defend his property rights. Though a popular young sheriff is able to defuse the situation, tempers are short.

That night, Calhoun is found dead, his throat sliced with a handmade stone blade. Was he killed by an archaeologist, angered by his wanton destruction of history? Neshoba County farmers have been plowing up stone tools like the murder weapon for centuries. Did one of them take this chance to even the score with an old rival?

The sheriff is well-aware that Faye and Joe were near the spot where Calhoun's body was found and their combined knowledge of stone tools is impressive. They had motive, means, and opportunity....but so does almost everyone in Neshoba County..
Price: $7.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The urgent debate over a multiracial category in the 2000 census forced the nation to reflect upon the important questions of what it means to construct and maintain a racial identity. Using in-depth interviews and survey data, Beyond Black documents how biracial people develop many different racial identities and how these self-understandings are derived from historical and contemporary social, cultural, interactional, and psychological processes..
Price: $18.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As the multiracial population in the United States continues to rise, new models for our understanding of mixed-race children and their conception of racial identity must be developed. Raising Biracial Children provides parents, educators, social workers, and anyone interested in multiracial issues with an accessible framework for understanding healthy mixed-race identity development and to translate those findings into practical care-giving strategies..
Price: $22.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past." Stuart Hall

Throughout the world arbitrary racial notions are used to define who is '"black" and who is "white" but the lines become blurred with people of mixed racial heritage. Joy Zarembka and her brother Tommy -- who are featured on the front cover of the book -- share the same parents and have striking physical similarities, yet were labelled at birth with very different racial designations; Joy was described as "black" and her brother as "white."

After extensive research in Britain, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Jamaica, Joy Zarembka explores the vastly divergent interpretations of racial identity in these countries and her native United States. By combining vivid anecdotes of her travels, historical background, and oral histories from mixed-race families, Joy Zarembka leads us to a new understanding of racial identity..
Price: $19.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]