Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia. Borderlands and Transcultural Studies Series. By Ann McGrath.

Abstract

Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia. Borderlands and Transcultural Studies Series. By Ann McGrath. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. xxxiv + 504 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00, CAN$58.50, £31.99.) In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, settler states in America and Australia attempted to police the boundaries of love. Illicit affairs, however, exposed their inability to impose fully a colonial social order. And as Ann McGrath demonstrates in her book Illicit Love , they also shaped the very concept of nation and self in these places. McGrath’s transnational study exposes the limits of intermarriage law among diverse populations: Americans, citizens of the Cherokee Nation, and the many inhabitants of Yarrabah, Queensland, Australia. … jjbuss{at}salisbury.edu