Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism, by Molly Littlewood Mckibbin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism by Molly Littlewood McKibbin Wendy Braun (bio) MOLLY LITTLEWOOD MCKIBBIN, Shades of Gray: Writing the New American Multiracialism. University of Nebraska Press, 2018. xi + 331 pp. ISBN 9780803296817. Mixed-race people have always existed, but are treated as an emerging phenomenon. While multicultural studies investigates the experiences and perceptions of mixed-race individuals from past to present, it has often fallen short of analyzing the role Whiteness plays in the construction of mixed-race identities, thereby leaving Whiteness unchallenged as a hegemonic racial category. Molly Littlewood McKibben fills this chasm in mixed-race studies by analyzing six texts that include an interracial protagonist with both Black and White parentage and in doing so, incorporates a more overt examination of Whiteness in the construction of racial identity and how this is depicted in contemporary multiracial literature. McKibben begins her monograph by clearly outlining her working definitions and providing a detailed primer of mixed-race history in the United States. This is important for two main reasons: it demonstrates the slipperiness of racial terms and highlights the often contradictory and ever-evolving ways these labels have been used socially, legally, and scientifically over time. In addition, McKibben notes that multicultural scholars often neglect to make clear their definitions or uncritically slip from one connotation to another, which does little to clear up misconceptions of race and inconsistencies in racial theory. The sample of texts, while analyzing mixed-race Black and White identity, also trouble the concept of Whiteness in ways previously unexamined. Whereas early mixed-race literature focused on the tragic mulatto/a character (an individual denied identity and community) or passing narratives (individuals choosing a tenuous and dangerous inclusion into White society), more contemporary iterations have focused on those same individuals forming racial identity and establishing community through Black pride and political activism. McKibben has chosen first-person coming-of-age narratives that reveal racial identity formation for mixed-race individuals, where the characters also explore their understanding of [End Page 145] both Blackness and Whiteness and what that means for their interracial identities. These texts include Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2001), Emily Raboteau’s The Professor’s Daughter (2005), Rachel Harper’s Brass Ankle Blues (2006), and Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (2010). In chapter 1, McKibben focuses on the works of Harper, Raboteau, Senna, and Walker. In these narratives, the protagonists do not want to default to the one-drop rule of Blackness and do not view Black pride as simultaneously denying the White part of their identities. However, their racial formation is often molded and even impeded by those around them, including family and friends, as well as the imposing gaze of strangers and acquaintances. These texts highlight the limitations of US racial terminology, especially for mixed-race individuals. Whereas the tragic mulatto/a figure emphasized the mental fracture of the Black-White multiracial person, these more contemporary texts expose that the problem lies with the “pathology of the country” (p. 74). Chapter 2 centers on the works of Senna and Walker, which explore ethnic Whiteness and highlight it as a constructed and performed identity. The narratives, which incorporate Latinx and Jewish identities, respectively, destabilize Whiteness as a homogenous, unracialized, and invisible category—one that is “pure” and somehow incompatible with Blackness. Building on this notion, chapter 3 focuses on the works of Harper, Raboteau, Walker, and Senna, who discuss multiethnic Blackness and colorism as Black identity is pitted against White in the lives of Black-White multiracials. These texts also demonstrate how psychologically and emotionally taxing it is for mixed-race individuals to navigate their own racial identities under daily microaggressions and cultural pathology. The protagonists learn the importance of diverse communities where they are less likely to have to defend or justify their mixed-raced identities. It is in these spaces that the characters often learn more inclusive vocabulary that encapsulates their identity, and they are less likely to feel that they have to identify monoracially. This marks a point in the multi-racial coming-of-age narrative...