As we are now : mixblood essays on race and identity

Book

As we are now : mixblood essays on race and identity / edited by William S. Penn.

Penn, W. S., 1949- (Added Author).

Summary:

The thirteen contributors to As We Are Now invite readers to explore with them the untamed territory of race and mixblood identity in North America. A "mixblood," according to editor W.S. Penn, recognizes that his or her identity comes not from distinct and separable strains of ancestry but from the sum of the tension and interplay of all his or her ancestral relationships. These first-person narratives cross racial, national, and disciplinary boundaries in a refreshingly experimental approach to writing culture. Their authors call on similar but varied cultural and aesthetic traditions―mostly oral―in order to address some aspect of race and identity about which they feel passionate, and all resist the essentialist point of view. Mixblood Native American, Mestizo/a, and African-American writers focus their discussion on the questions indigenous and minority people ask and the way in which they ask them, clearly merging the singular "I" with the communal "we." These are new voices in the dialogue of ethnic writers, and they offer a highly original treatment of an important subject.

Record details

ISBN: 0520210727
ISBN: 9780520210721
ISBN: 0520210735
ISBN: 9780520210738
Physical Description: 255 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Publisher: Berkeley : University of California Press, ©1997.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references.
Formatted Contents Note:: Cutting and pinning patterns / Erika Aigner-Varoz -- Howling at the moon: the queer but true story of my life as a Hank Williams song / Craig Womack -- Crossing borders from the beginning / Alfonso Rodriguez -- Knots / Carol Kalafatic -- What part moon / Inez Petersen -- Tradition and the individual imitation / William S. Penn -- On mapping and urban shamans / Kimberly Blaeser -- Race and mixed-race: a personal tour / Rainier Spencer -- Visions in the four directions: five hundred years of resistance and beyond / Arturo Aldama -- Between the masques / Diane Dubose Brunner -- From the turn of the century to the new age: playing Indian, past and present / Shari Huhndorf -- Troublemakers / Rolando Romero -- Ritchie Valens is dead: e pluribus unum / Patricia Penn Hilden.