Customer Reviews

What Are You?: Voices of Mixed-Race Young People

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had been waiting for this book all of my life and when I found it and read it I wished it had been on the shelves when I was a teen and young adult. It is enlightening and enriching to finally hear the many voices that exist outside of the boxes. As an American born in this country who constantly heard and still hear, "Where are you from?" on a regular basis, I highly recommend this book to all adults who have lived through the mixed race reality and for their children who are mixed race.

This book is so great and touching. As a mixed race teen this book gave me hope and confidence. It taught me to honest and open. It made me proud to be me. Never has a book made me so convinced that I am great and wonderful to be multiracial. I thank the author for this awesome book. Anyone who is biracial should read this book. Not just once, but over and over, marking the poems and stories that you can most relate to and read them when you are feeling down on yourself. This is one "must have" book.

This was a comforting book for me to read; I only wish I had read it years before. Gaskins offers only slight commentary or explanation on the issues surrounding being multi-racial, so don't look to this book for answers or judgements. What it offers is the chance to hear a wide range of voices from disparate people who have eerily all shared very similar experiences.

The worst part of being multi-racial is the feeling that you are alone. If you're a member of another minority, even though you may experience horrible racism there is the comfort of knowing that they are others like you who are treated the same way. As a multi-racial person there is no feeling of having a "people". We have no community, no role-models, no intuition that we're not the only one of our kind in the world. I took joy in reading this book and realizing that they were more of us out there than I had realized.

I am so glad that this was book was written! The young people who were featured were sensitive and engaging writers, who gave us all a further sense of struggle with biracial/multiracial identity in this country. For me, knowledge is power, and this book was definitely empowering. It de-emphasized statistics, faceless percentages that we read about in the newspaper and hear about on television that represent the increase in bicultural/multiracial people in this country.

I find it really sad that in a culture like the United States where we claim to be a "melting pot" we still haven't managed to get over who melts, and how they melt, as well as with which groups they mix with in the melting process. Speaking as a culturally-diverse young woman, about to graduate from college, I think it is of invaluable importance that people feel good about their cultures, feel free to express them and be given the respect they deserve. One point that was raised in WHAT ARE YOU? that I can definitely relate to is the scrutiny people experience when on the receiving end of other's judgments and prejudices. I am Polish/Latina/Lebanese and I can't tell you how many times people have said, "You don't look (fill in the blank)." The world has to realize people come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and the images projected on the boob tube, in the movies and in music are not a fair representation of all people. They are just a cross section of examples. We need to be open to the diversity of all. Then, maybe we can come to accept ourselves through accepting others.

Even though I'm not of a mixed race, I resonated with the thoughts and feelings of those in the book. As a Chinese-American raised in a Jewish neighborhood, I often did not know what I was and people would ask the question "Where are you from?" knowing full well the purpose of their question. I appreciated the range of emotions and thoughtful musings by the writers - from ambivalence to full acceptance of their unique heritage. This is an important resource to those who work in student development at the college level. It's a picture of the world as it is and will be.

I'm confused by my reaction to the book. As an editor of MAVIN, a multiracial magazine, I would think that the stories told in *What Are You?* would incite well-versed reactions. However, I had butterflies opening the envelope and while quickly skimming the table of contents. Quickly the euphoria changed to familiar, yet repressed feelings of 'other-ness,' alienation, ambiguity--almost sadness. The book's impact is inevitably felt on all levels, as being mixed is something you can never truly 'abandon' or 'escape;' it is intricately woven into every experience, simple and profound. Now I understand that the source of my confusion is the gradual process of the book's impact as it revisits myriad experiences in my history, and stirs them all up again. As they settle back down, the influence of each experience has been slightly altered and better understood. Congratulations and thank you for creating a powerful resource whose impact waxes daily.

Reading this book made me remember a biracial childhood friend. As young children, we thought of her as no different from the rest of the kids in the neighborhood. However, as we got to high school, people wanted to define her, wanted her to define herself. She didn't. I admired her for that. I always wished I could've felt comfortable enough with her to find out just what was going on inside her head during those times. After reading this book, now I feel that maybe I have a glimpse of that. This book will help anyone who is not biracial have a better understanding of the thoughts and experiences of those who are.

I just finished reading "What Are You!" by Pearl Fuyo Gaskins. This book shares important insights into the issues surrounding mixed-race young adults. It is an important book for both young and older adults to read. Pearl Gaskins brings many important issues to light through the words of the young adults she interviewed. Once you read one "snapshot" you are compelled to continue reading all of the stories these young adults have to share. I highly recommend this book to all parents and children - as well as anyone else interested in issues of mixed-race identity/relations and social equality for all.

This simple statement encompasses a whole new meaning to me. As we embark on the millinium, America will become a more diverse society. For the last four hundred years we have been classified in four catergories; Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic. Referred as a melting pot, that has segregated itself and forced each other in seperate corners. As mixed race persons, we are the link between and within the races. We have historically been forced to identify with one race while abandoning the other. These stories need to be heard. They are a guide and companion for the mixed races, which bring a true identity to a people who have long been overlooked.

This brilliant book is a must for young adult collections in both public library and school library settings. With minimal commentary from author Pearl Fuyo Gaskins who grew up mixed-race in a time when it was definitely viewed as an oddity at best, the voices of mixed race young people growing up today is revelatory, honest, at times raw, but above all offers a spark of hope for our divisive society. Many of these young people have had to face what few adults care to think about, but what comes through as you read is that, despite unpleasant or even cruel reactions from people, these young people have found strength in their heritage and a realization that they are the wave of the future. The photographs that accompany many of the entries are an inspiration and add greatly to the impact of the message.
The "voices" of these twenty odd individuals are varied not only in their multiracial biology, but also in their experiences. Those who grow up in insular communities where racial mixing is rare have extremely different, usually more negative, experiences than those lucky enough to grow up in places where their fellow mixed race teenagers are legion. For example, those teens from the California coastal cities view their background as an advantage that gives them greater perspective on the world. They have pride in their heritage and are viewed by their peers as more cool because of it.
I recommend this book to anyone who cares about the future cohesion of our society, but I especially recommend it to young people of any race as a glimpse into the fabulous variety that is America and the pride we should all feel about who we are. This is a book that inspires hope for one race: the human race.