Biracial Quotes

Biracial.” I correct with an edge. “Puppies are mixed.

I fucking hate it, the idea that something like that would be trivialized down to a fucking hashtag. I mean, there's a ton of biphobia — people refuse to accept bisexuality as an actual sexuality. And I'm biracial, but also white-passing, which is a unique perspective. So these kids say, like, "Oh, fucking tri-bi Halsey! She'll never miss an opportunity to talk about it!" I want to sit them down like a mom and go, "Six months ago you were begging for an artist that would talk about this shit! But then I do, and you say, 'Oh, not her. Someone else.

If people would only listen to themselves, they would realize how naïve and ignorant they sound. Just because the term was created doesn’t mean it should be used.

When there is a gap—between your face and your race, between the baby and the mother, between your body and yourself—you are expected, everywhere you go, to explain the gap.

I Am More Than My Race: So why put me in a category? Is it because you do not want me to tell my story? Despite my exotic face, I am human, and I am a part of the human race.

Why is race always a factor?

It's important for us to know where we come from and what's been done to us, otherwise, how're we supposed to fight what's happening to us now? It's all connected.

Why is race always a factor? Nowadays, people are so quick to categorize one another and put each other in a stereotypical bubble that they do not take time to know the authentic person. It is sad, and they are quick to judge by looking at someone’s skin.

(The Eagles' song "Take It Easy") is clearly a problem of a young man, as no one over thirty-five could sustain interest in seven simultaneous relationships unless they're biracial and amazing at golf.

It takes one a long time to become young. - Picasso

Hate pulls so much negative energy from the soul. I guess the saying is true; misery loves company.

When I first went to kindergarten kids asked me what I was. I did not understand-I'm a person. They explained that I look a little different and it is not as easy to tell which color I am. -Janelle from Who I Am Not What I Am, Tara Michener

Is Obama Anything but Black? So lots of folk—mostly non-black—say Obama’s not black, he’s biracial, multiracial, black-and-white, anything but just black. Because his mother was white. But race is not biology; race is sociology. Race is not genotype; race is phenotype. Race matters because of racism. And racism is absurd because it’s about how you look. Not about the blood you have. It’s about the shade of your skin and the shape of your nose and the kink of your hair. Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass had white fathers. Imagine them saying they were not black. Imagine Obama, skin the color of a toasted almond, hair kinky, saying to a census worker—I’m kind of white. Sure you are, she’ll say. Many American Blacks have a white person in their ancestry, because white slave owners liked to go a-raping in the slave quarters at night. But if you come out looking dark, that’s it. (So if you are that blond, blue-eyed woman who says “My grandfather was Native American and I get discrimination too” when black folk are talking about shit, please stop it already.) In America, you don’t get to decide what race you are. It is decided for you. Barack Obama, looking as he does, would have had to sit in the back of the bus fifty years ago. If a random black guy commits a crime today, Barack Obama could be stopped and questioned for fitting the profile. And what would that profile be? “Black Man.

There’s also the multicultural side of me, the biracial ancestry that allows me to connect with a wide spectrum of people. And then there’s my spirit, that blend of glass-half-full optimism, introverted reflection, and outward-facing social activism.

The way of the world is full of judgmental people. People size me up and down with their eyes. I am told that my hair is too curly to be white and too straight to be black. People ask me questions as if I owe them an answer—what does my race have anything to do with you—and why do you care. The fact is, race shouldn’t exist—it is not real. It is made up, but race does matter.” Race shouldn’t matter, but it does. In society's eyes, race is stubbornly real.

Being biracial is being tied to places, people, and a history that wouldn't have welcomed me.

I know how it feels for people to assume things about you, to prescribe a label for you based on how you appear to them. I have spent my life trying to explain to people that while I look black, I am biracial. I have spent my life knowing the importance of allowing people to tell you who they are instead of reducing them to labels.

I'm at a camp with over 100 girls 11 to 13 years old, around my own age, and I feel like my parents are my only friends. -Mackenzie

If your not living on the edge, your taking up way too much space!

We ate, did our homework, got good grades, kissed our parents goodnight and always had the secret door and shared experiences to go to. It was truly remarkable, and doing it as a group made us feel invulnerable. As soon as the drums and amps were set up and Jean and Kathie hit it, I tell you there was nothing more to say. Conversation stopped, and the magic carpet ride took off. I’ve never felt anything more powerful in my life.

YA is about angst. Will I get that boy to like me? Will I lose the weight? Will I turn into a vampire if he just gives me a hickey? I’m an orphan! I’m a mind reader! I’m biracial! I’m gay! When I get out of high school, I’ll move to New York City, where I’ll find others like me, and then I’ll be happy and I will have it all: a career, a family, good teeth, and takeout Chinese.

The city of Paris, France, became a place of refuge for biracial Americans during slavery and at the time of the Harlem Renaissance for black musicians, fine artists, writers and others seeking opportunities to practice their craft free from American racism.

What many black and biracial transracial adoptees were not prepared for was that the societal realities they faced were the same as those facing other people of color. The information that white transracial adoptive parents needed to give their children did not exist in the white world; these parents would have to interact with black America in order to understand the problems most likely to trouble transracially adopted children.

I mean persons who are visually identifiable as white or who pass for white. Therefore, this includes persons who are biracial, multiracial, or white-passing People of Color who benefit under systems of white supremacy from having lighter skin color than visibly Brown, Black, or Indigenous people.

Proximity to and even intimacy with BIPOC does not erase white privilege, unconscious bias, or complicity in the system of white supremacy. Being in a relationship with a BIPOC or having a biracial or multiracial child does not absolve a person with white privilege from the practice of antiracism.

And if I’m being honest, there is something very inspiring about having a black woman running things. As a biracial woman myself—light brown skin and dark brown eyes courtesy of my black father, an abundance of face freckles courtesy of my white mother—Frankie makes me feel more sure that I can one day run things, too.

Xuan and I had decided to take a trip together in honor of our one-thousand-day anniversary. We ate Korean barbecue, shared a decadent cake, and then drove three and a half hours to Yosemite. I’d never heard of such an occasion. But in Seoul, where Ji-Hoon was born and raised, there was almost a monthly holiday devoted to romance. We wore similar out- fits, which Xuan said was common for couples in Asian countries. Three years was a big deal, especially when we didn’t know how many more we’d have.

I looked at his hand clasping mine. Three years ago, on October 15, 2016, the brilliant blue blaze of the comet had crossed the vastness of our world in Colombia. I could see it, almost as if we were back there, standing on the roof of the dorms as we looked over the city together. We didn’t know it then, but our life together was just beginning.

Racism in the UK takes a different form than it does in the United States, but there is no mistaking its existence and how engrained it is. A major theme of racism in the UK centers on the question of who is authentically “British.” It can come through in subtle acts of bias, micro-aggressions such as the Palace staffer who told the biracial co-author of this book, “I never expected you to speak the way you do,” or the Daily Mail headline, “Memo to Meghan: We Brits Prefer True Royalty to Fashion Royalty.” While their columnist was criticizing Meghan for her Vogue editorials, there was another way to read it, and that was that to be British meant to be born and bred in the UK—and be white.

Change "I'm too old to start (or finish or publish) that novel" to "I'm too alive NOT to start." Sharing your words is the best way to keep on living.

Racism is real, and you do not need a magnifying glass to see it.

Racism is like a wildfire that will never die out. The only way for it to die out is for it to be smoother with love.

Do they know I’m black?”  I ask. “I thought you were biracial.” To most white people, black and biracial are the same thing.

My guard is always up because of how some people would treat me because I am biracial.

Biracial.

I wrote Dreams of My Mothers because it reveals deep insight into a topic - cross boarder, cross racial adoption - that rarely gets much attention from any quarter, because it represents such a niche subset of our society, but contains within it nearly all the most deeply felt – and held – human themes, passions, values, insecurities, and judgments. And loves.

I don’t really care if their parents are same sex, lesbian or gay, straight, married, cohabitating, divorced, bi-racial or what. If they love and take care of them, which is basically what all children need and want, I don’t think it matters. -- Breaking Through (Military Romantic Suspense) (Book 2 of the SEAL TEAM Heartbreakers)

Why do people hate my color so much? Why do I intimidate them? Why are they disgusted by me? What have I done to make them hate me? I did not choose to be biracial. Why can’t I be accepted for me? Why do I have to choose?

It is pathetic how people attach value to race. Some people say race is real and that race doesn’t matter. The fact is, race shouldn’t exist—it is not real. It is made up, but race does matter. Race shouldn’t matter, but it does. In society's eyes, race is stubbornly real.

You gave me books and articles. You keep telling me not to forget I'm Arab. But it's not just the white people reminding me who I am, Baba. Arabs remind me I'm not one of them too. This world may never let me forget I am Arab, but it will also keep me from belonging as one of them.

Whatever Obama’s other triumphs, arguably his greatest has been an expansion of the black imagination to encompass this: the idea that a man can be culturally black and many other things also—biracial, Ivy League, intellectual, cosmopolitan, temperamentally conservative, presidential.

Being biracial is exhausting. I mean, we cannot change who we are. Someone told me that I do not experience colorism on a negative level. Just because I am light-skinned, I am told I deny the privilege I have. What is my privilege? My color? Colorism is a huge issue within itself—I call everything that is going on ‘social constructionism.

I love ben

The reality of this wide-eyed caramel-coloured wonder was arresting. This was the future, alive and kicking in my arms.

Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was the colour of polished mahogany.

Let’s keep it real here. Who are we fooling? Racism has still has a heartbeat, and I do not see it dying anytime soon.” -Charlena E. Jackson, Why are You Obsessed with My Race?

Let’s keep it real here. Who are we fooling? Racism has still has a heartbeat, and I do not see it dying anytime soon.

Mixed-race is overlooked and misunderstood.” -Charlena E. Jackson, Why are You Obsessed with My Race?

I always had my blackness and whiteness question. It hurts because I feel like you are asking me to question my relationship with my mother and father.

I Am More Than My Race: I was told by someone that I am not ‘pure black.’ What does that mean? I would love to meet a ‘pure black’ person. Shall I say more?

I am not the one to put in a ‘category.’” -Charlena E. Jackson, Why are You Obsessed with My Race?

I feel dead inside. I do not fit in. I struggle mentally to find my place in this world. I do not know who I am. It is like being multiracial is a double edge sword.

I Am More Than My Race.

Every day, it seems like it will never end. I fall asleep, wake up, and it seems like this bullshit world of people repeats the cycle again with cruel and hateful words.

There may be weeds in my life, but the sun outweighs all of the bad.

Most of the time, black and white people despise me. I get tired of being the one who always has to leave it all behind, forgive and forget as if nothing ever happened.

I cannot expect anything from anyone when I know exactly what I am going to get.

America has divided and separated people because of our skin. It is a war of two races—I do not think there will ever be racial harmony.

Our generation is the change.

WE CAN LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT AMERICA’S HISTORY WITHOUT SPREADING HATE.

Race is a ‘social DNA,’ and they act like mixed blood is a mystery. We live in a systemic racist world.

When you look at me, what do you see? When you see me, you see a war of colors because that is what you were taught to see.

I am always this happy-go-lucky person, but sometimes my ‘happy-go-lucky’ runs out.

It seems like we cannot escape racism because it is everywhere we go.

It makes me sick to see that we as Americans are at war with each other’s race.

My stomach twisted. I felt an ache inside me grow in anger. Prejudice and hatred were poisonous and all-consuming, spreading like a cancer every day.

I Am More Than My Race. Labels do not define me. I was told my ‘whiteness’ will get me far. Is that right? I cannot tell because all of my life, their definition of ‘far’ left me a scar.

Hispanic means the chocolate-skinned woman from Peru, Hispanic means the indigenous people of Mexico. Hispanic means the biracial-looking folks from the Dominican Republic. Hispanic means the paler folks from Puerto Rico. Hispanic also means the blond, blue-eyed guy from Argentina. All you need to be is Spanish-speaking but not from Spain and voilà, you’re a race called Hispanic.

Okay. I’m not a white male. At least, not predominantly so. And as I mentioned before, I’m in an environment right now where race is really important. See, Chinese men are not that physically intimidating. We’re not that tall. We’re not that built. We have exactly one thing going for us in a fight — that our opponent recognizes that there’s a possibility, no matter how remote, that we might know kung-fu.

In that instant, I even forgot my own name, until I heard it being whispered from his lips. “Cassie,” he said, pulling away. I wanted this—dreamed of it, but now that it was happen- ing, I didn’t know how I’d ever want anything else. I wanted more. I wanted him. As he held my gaze, I realized that I had never felt more alive. And I knew, deep down, that this was only the beginning of our journey together.

She also appreciated that he didn’t flinch when she asked about his political leanings. No politics, no religion, no money mentions were a thing of the past. Rafe might be qualified, but she was trying to raise two young, biracial Black girls and she’d be damned if she let someone who was a fan of walls and assault rifles and playing fast and loose with general human rights spend that kind of time around them.

We continued dancing as a swift gale wheeled through the hills of Santa Cruz. Xuan leaned down to whisper into my ear, his lips lightly brushing the helix. “Once upon a time there was a boy, and he loved a girl very much. He was sad because he didn’t think the girl noticed him. Until one day the uni- verse intervened and a beautiful comet brought them together after a tragic accident occurred that day. The boy and the girl found comfort and friendship in each other that night. And something new and extraordinary began to blossom under the heavens, something that would burn with such bright- ness that all the stars would be in awe. And the boy fell madly in love with the girl and promised to always find her, in this life and the next.” “That’s my favorite story.” Xuan smiled. “It’s the best one I’ve ever told, Ms. Steel.

If more people are comfortable in their skin and think for themselves, then I do not believe manipulation and hate would be so dominant in the world today.” -Charlena E. Jackson, Why are You Obsessed with My Race?

It is sad that this country is condemned by a generational curse of centuries and decades of hate. The pollution of hate will end when we speak the truth without everyone thinking the fingers are being pointed at them.

I am used to some of the black girls saying I want to be black to prove a point and most of the white girls saying I used my white side when I need something. I never understood why they would make those senseless comments.

I was telling them about back home and how all the boys were chasing me because I was half-caste, and they said I was dissing myself. So now I say biracial, and I'm supposed to be offended when somebody says half-caste. I've met a lot of people here with white mothers and they are so full of issues, eh. I didn't know I was even supposed to have issues until I came to America . Honestly, if anybody wants to raise bi-racial kids, do it in Nigeria

I have to fight for my life because I have a black Dad and a white Mom. I am judged everywhere I go because people are too busy looking at my color. Their eyes scan me up and down as they try to figure out what I am mixed with.

29. “I have to fight for my life because I have a black Dad and a white Mom. I am judged everywhere I go because people are too busy looking at my color. Their eyes scan me up and down as they try to figure out what I am mixed with.

One participant described her frustration when she joined the Asian American Association in high school: 'I totally did not fit in...It kind of made me mad because I looked like them, so I felt like I identified with them, but once I got in, I learned I really don't at all.' Caught between the expectations of two groups, [transracial adoptees] often felt rejected by White people due to physical differences and by people of their birth ethnicity due to lack of language and cultural knowledge.

Nothing has changed. Many say there is a new system that was born in America. Nah, it is not new. The system never died. It is more of a shady renovation, if you will. It reminds me of a reality TV show; however, it has been renewed with over 400 new seasons. It is now what I call the new Jim Crow.

The Romans and Greeks believed that the appearance of comets, meteors, and meteor showers was portentous. They were signs that something good or bad had happened... or was about to happen. For me, that was the moment I fell in love with Xuan. That was the promise of a future filled with love... and beauty... and brilliance. That future began and ended with Xuan.

Most of my friends didn’t believe in destiny. Nothing supernatural, nothing sent from above... no magic, no fate, just life, circumstances, and probability. But there were many signs from the universe pointing to Xuan. I never thought my love story would begin as a blockbuster, but everything that happened seemed like a big neon celestial sign that we were meant to be together. My friends would never understand, not really. If I hadn’t met Xuan, I would likely feel the same as them.

I was examining the perfumed, coloured candles guaranteed to bring good fortune with continued use when a lovely mocha-skinned girl came in from the back room and stood behind the counter. She wore a white smock over her dress and looked about nineteen or twenty. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was the colour of polished mahogany. A number of thin, silver hoops jingled on her fine-boned wrist. "May I help you?" she asked. Just beneath her carefully modulated diction lingered the melodic calypso lilt of the Caribbean.

When are we going to wake up and call it what it is? They degrade blacks; instead of getting sprayed by a water hose, we are now getting sprayed with bullets! Instead of getting a peaceful night’s rest, our doors are getting kicked in! Oh, and instead of suffocating us with their white sheets or tying a noose around our necks and hanging us from a tree, they suffocate us by putting their knee on our neck instead. Let’s keep it real here. Who are we fooling? Racism has still has a heartbeat, and I do not see it dying anytime soon.

81. “When are we going to wake up and call it what it is? They degrade blacks; instead of getting sprayed by a water hose, we are now getting sprayed with bullets! Instead of getting a peaceful night’s rest, our doors are getting kicked in! Oh, and instead of suffocating us with their white sheets or tying a noose around our necks and hanging us from a tree, they suffocate us by putting their knee on our neck instead. Let’s keep it real here. Who are we fooling? Racism has still has a heartbeat, and I do not see it dying anytime soon.

I hear a lot of black dudes call each other niggers or nigga. Why? Then we as blacks are upset when another race calls us the ‘N’ word. Do we really have the right to be upset? No, we do not because we can’t expect other races not to call us the ‘N’ word if we call each other the ‘N’ word. So I say once again, and I cannot say this enough. We should respect ourselves and each other. We should be ashamed to use the word … the nickname if you will … that white people made up for us. It is not okay for a black person to use the word Nigger or Nigga so loosely!

Roxy was bi, and in my opinion she was—and still is—a total badass. Of all my childhood friends, this girl’s my bestie. Even when we were young, I knew deep down that Roxy was going to conquer the world. Her brilliance, coupled with her unwavering commitment to feminism and human rights, made her truly exceptional. And she cared, really cared, about animals and the pressing issues in our world. She wasn’t just one of these people that wore shirts and posted awareness videos online. She dedicated her weekends to protests and taking action. And I loved that she was hooking up with Amren, or whoever this girl was, if she made Roxy happy. I loved her. I loved all of her. Hopefully Amren would see how awesome Roxy was and make her feel special.

It is common to assume that multi-racialism is inevitable, and that racial identity will disappear as races mix. Americans prefer to think that the “tragic mulatto,” welcome in neither community, was either a myth or a reflection of outmoded racist thinking. Research suggests things may not be so simple. A 2003 study of 90,000 middle-school and high-school students found that black/white mixed-race children had more health and psychological problems than children who were either black or white. They were more likely to be depressed, sleep badly, skip school, smoke, drink, consider suicide, and have sex. White/Asian children showed similar symptoms. The principal author concluded that the cause was “the struggle with identity formation, leading to lack of self-esteem, social isolation and problems of family dynamics in biracial households.” The authors of a 2008 study reached the same conclusion: “When it comes to engaging in risky/anti-social adolescent behavior, however, mixed race adolescents are stark outliers compared to both blacks and whites. . . . Mixed race adolescents—not having a natural peer group—need to engage in more risky behaviors to be accepted.” A study of white/Asian children found that they were twice as likely as mono-racial children—34 percent vs. 17 percent—to suffer from psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression or drug abuse. Yoonsun Choi of the University of Chicago found that in Seattle middle schools, a clear racial identity seemed to protect against certain problems. Bi-racial children were the group most likely to smoke, take drugs, have been in fights, hurt someone badly, or carry a gun. Prof. Choi believes mixed-race children suffer because no racial group accepts them. “There is some indication that a strong ethnic identity helps protect kids from these [undesirable] behaviors,” she said.

Events in the African American town of Hamburg, in the Edgefield District of South Carolina, were typical of many others across the former Confederacy where white paramilitary groups mobilized to regain control of state governments. Their aim was simple: prevent African Americans from voting. In July 1876, a few months before the election that gave the presidency to Hayes, a violent rampage in Hamburg abolished the civil rights of freed slaves. Calling itself the Red Shirts, a collection of white supremacists killed six African American men and then murdered four others whom the gang had captured. Benjamin Tillman led the Red shirts; the massacre propelled him to a twenty-four-year career as the most vitriolic racist in the U.S. Senate. Following the massacre, the terror did not abate. In September, a 'rifle club' of more than 500 whites crossed the Savannah River from Georgia and camped outside Hamburg. A local judge begged the governor to protect the African American population, but to no avail. The rifle club then moved on to the nearby hamlet of Ellenton, killing as many as fifty African Americans. President Ulysses S. Grant then sent in federal troops, who temporarily calmed things down but did not eliminate the ongoing threats. Employers in the Edgefield District told African Americans they would be fired, and landowners threatened black sharecroppers with eviction if they voted to maintain a biracial state government. When the 1876 election took place, fraudulent white ballots were cast; the total vote in Edgefield substantially exceeded the entire voting age population. Results like these across the state gave segregationist Democrats the margin of victory they needed to seize control of South Carolina's government from the black-white coalition that had held office during Reconstruction. Senator Tillman later bragged that 'the leading white men of Edgefield' had decided to 'seize the first opportunity that the Negroes might offer them to provoke a riot and teach the Negroes a lesson.' Although a coroner's jury indicted Tillman and ninety-three other Red Shirts for the murders, they were never prosecuted and continued to menace African Americans. Federal troops never came to offer protection. The campaign in Edgefield was of a pattern followed not only in South Carolina but throughout the South. With African Americans disenfranchised and white supremacists in control, South Carolina instituted a system of segregation and exploitation that persisted for the next century. In 1940, the state legislature erected a statute honoring Tillman on the capitol grounds, and in 1946 Clemson, one of the state's public universities, renamed its main hall in Tillman's honor. It was in this environment that hundreds of thousands of African Americans fled the former Confederacy in the first half of the twentieth century.

ADDRESSING DIVERSITY The way to reach the sheer diversity of the city is through new churches. New churches are the single best way to reach (1) new generations, (2) new residents, and (3) new people groups. Young adults have always been disproportionately located in newer congregations. Long-established congregations develop traditions (such as time of worship, length of service, emotional responsiveness, sermon topics, leadership styles, emotional atmosphere, and dozens of other tiny customs and mores) that reflect the sensibilities of longtime leaders who have the influence and resources to control the church life. These sensibilities often do not reach the younger generations. THE 1 PERCENT RULE Lyle Schaller talks about the 1 percent rule: “Each year any association of churches should plant new congregations at the rate of 1 percent of their existing total; otherwise, that association is in maintenance and decline. If an association wants to grow 50 percent plus [in a generation], it must plant 2 to 3 percent per year.”6 In addition, new residents are typically better reached by new churches. In older congregations, it may require years of tenure in the city before a person is allowed into a place of influence, but in a new church, new residents tend to have equal power with longtime area residents. Finally, new sociocultural groups in a community are generally better reached by new congregations. For example, if white-collar commuters move into an area where the older residents were farmers, a new church will probably be more receptive to the multiple needs of the new residents, while older churches will continue to be oriented to the original social group. And a new church that is intentionally multiethnic from the start will best reach new racial groups in a community. For example, if an all-Anglo neighborhood becomes 33 percent Hispanic, a new, deliberately biracial church will be far more likely to create “cultural space” for newcomers than will an older church in town. Brand-new immigrant groups can normally only be reached by churches ministering in their own languages. If we wait until a new group is sufficiently assimilated into American culture to come to our church, we will wait for years without reaching out to them. Remember that a new congregation for a new people group can often be planted within the overall structure of an existing church — perhaps through a new Sunday service at another time or a new network of house churches connected to a larger existing congregation. Though it may technically not be a new independent congregation, it serves the same function.

You can't always choose which. Sometimes you have to BE which.

Korie: When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In class that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn’t know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if God wanted it to happen, it would happen. There were several families at White’s Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn’t do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.

I saw her note the way I hovered over the various ethnicities on the form. First the 'white' box, then to the airspace over the 'black' box, a kind of momentary hesitation, a protest of stillness, a staring into the abyss of everything I did not know about myself. She, like me, was made of halves.

Do I have to admit that I'm half Cuban and half American, or should I go even further, and explain that Dad's parents were born in the Ukraine, part of Soviet Russia? Or am I just entirely American, all the fractions left behind by immigration from faraway nations?

At the steamy train station in New Orleans, horrifying signs above drinking fountains announce: COLORED. WHITE. Confused, I drink out of both. Why should it matter if a stream of coo, refreshing water pours into my mouth or another?

ON JULY 15, 1787, eight-year-old Polly Jefferson and fourteen-year-old Sally Hemings reached Jefferson’s Paris doorstep. Sally Hemings had come to Monticello as an infant in 1773 as part of Martha Jefferson’s inheritance from her father. John Wayles had fathered six children with his biracial captive Elizabeth Hemings. Sally was the youngest. By 1787, she was reportedly “very handsome, [with] long straight hair down her back,” and she accompanied Polly to Paris instead of an “old nurse.

How best to portray the story of Lydia---a woman who has mixed Japanese, Malaysian, and English heritage, and who is a vampire, a creature inherently half-demon, half-human---who is constantly trying to resist the temptation of her nature? I designed many versions of this cover; some depicted Lydia, while others focused on specific details from the story, like bite marks, or a pig whose blood she drinks in order to stave off her cravings for human blood. In the end, though, the most powerful visual was not one of Lydia herself, but of the novel's antagonist. Because Lydia is an artist, it felt fitting to use a painting on the cover, but it needed to be a piece that spoke to the story on multiple levels. Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit felt just right; the sidelong glance peering back at the viewer, the lush basket filled with food that Lydia can never eat, not to mention Caravaggio's own less-than-pristine reputation, not dissimilar to our antagonist's. The final touch: a perfectly-placed crack in the canvas---or is it a bite mark?

I'd see this confusion play out on the national stage among whites and blacks alike, the need to situate someone inside his or her ethnicity and the frustration that comes when it can't easily be done.

Xuan tucked his arm underneath my neck. “Now sleep. I’m here, and you’re safe. I’m not going anywhere.” “Promise?” “I promise. Yǒu yuán qiān lǐ lái xiāng huì.” “What does that mean?” I muttered sleepily, my eyelids refusing to open. “It means that even from thousands of miles away, Fate has intervened,” he said softly and wrapped his arm around me.

When the waiter left, I asked Xuan, “Have you ever wondered about God? Or religions other than your own?” “Most of my family is Buddhist. Growing up, every year my grandparents on my mother’s side organized a chaoshan jinxiang—what I think you know as a pilgrimage. We’d go to the city’s most important religious site, Miaofengshan, or the Mountain of the Wondrous Peak, which is considered one of the five holy mountains that match cardinal directions in geomancy. They still go yearly to pay their respects to the mountain and to present incense. Honestly, I’ve only stepped foot into one church in my life, and that was with my nǎi nai.” I knew nǎi nai meant “grandmother” in Chinese. “You did?” I asked, a little surprised. He’d never mentioned that. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I used to spend weekends at her house. She had a lot of paintings of Jesus, and a beautiful jade rosary. When I was young, she took me to a Catholic church, and I remember watching her as she asked God for several things and lit prayer candles. Nǎi nai believed a church was a place where dreams were realized. She told me to tell God my wishes and He would grant them. I remember what I said to her when she told me to make a wish.” Xuan offered an indulgent half smile. “Where is God, huh? Look around us. Look at all the bad things that happen in this world. God isn’t a genie, and a church isn’t a place for wishes to be granted. It’s a place for the lonely, sick, weak, and broken. It’s a place people go to not feel alone. But my nǎi nai still went back, every Sunday.” I continued watching Xuan, not quite sure where this conversation was going. I patiently waited for him to make his point. “I didn’t make any wishes that day. I had never made a wish or spoken to God until the night of the mudslide. But I remember, in Colombia, looking out onto the road and seeing your vehicle trapped, and silently I prayed. I’ll believe in you. So please... . save her. If you let her live, I’ll happily give up the rest of the time I have left alive. Take me and let Cassie live.