Introduction:
America has a wealth of literary heritage which begins from the earliest days of English and Scottish-Irish settlement and as the nation continued to evolve, the literary canon continued to expand accordingly. With mixed races being part of the national makeup for several decades, it was only natural that literature from this sector of the population would begin to infiltrate the American literary American makeup alongside other genres such as the Asian and African American genres.
Mixed race literature as compelling non-fiction
One of the finest examples of mixed race literature is Barack Obama’s ‘Dreams of my Father’ which demonstrates a special longing for a father that Obama never knew. He was Kenyan while his mother was an American woman from Hawaii so the mixed race component is definitely there. Let us consider this excerpt:
“First longings leapt up to brush my heart. Distant voices appeared, and ebbed, and then appeared again. I remembered the stories that my mother and her parents told me as a child, the stories of a family trying to explain itself. I recalled my first year as a community organizer in Chicago and my awkward steps toward manhood.” (Obama, 1995).
Here we can observe the power of storytelling from the past to the younger generation which demonstrates the importance of the tales concept which is also used by American Indians. Obama had to learn about his father from his grandmother while in company with his sister. This is certainly a compelling situation and one can also sense the yearning of Obama to encounter his father and become a real family. He defines his progression towards manhood as ‘awkward, doubtless due to the fact that he lacked the father figure to look up to although thankfully this did not have any negative effect on his career which saw him rise to the highest echelons of achievement as President of the United States. However the mixed race literature element surely shows different strands of society in more ways than one and is a valuable addition to the literary canon and is not just part of the racial/ethnic element at all.
In ‘Exploring the Popularization of the Mixed Race American’, Michele Elam looks at the progress made in mixed race arts especially on the publications and drama side of things. However Elam also notes the increased popularity of mixed race literature in very basic outlets such as cartoons as well as children’s literature. In this quote one can feel the pulse of the vibrancy which is informing mixed race culture in the United States:
“I started noticing the increasing popularization of certain kinds of images of mixed race people in media,” a popularity that extended into education curricula, from children’s books on how to raise a mixed race kindergartener through to college courses in “mixed race studies” (Elam, 2011)
This quote helps us to observe the differences which are going on in American society for Elam notes that although mixed race people were becoming much more popular in the media, not enough attention was being given to the literature emanating from this source. She seems to believe that the contribution of mixed race art is crucial to our understanding of the race question as we continue travelling through the new millennium. This is a potent observation and doubtlessly is important to our further appreciation of this literary genre.
Heidi Durrow’s seminal novel, ‘The Girl Who Fell from the Sky’ is a typical example of mixed race literature where the author is half Danish but is black. At first her work received multiple rejections but when it as finally published it actually became a best seller infiltrating elite publications such as The New Yorker and national radio stations where she was repeatedly invited to talk about her book. One can also note that works such as these have a positive multiplier effect on the declaration of Americans who are of mixed race identity; in fact this has increased by no less than 32 per cent since the year 2000.
Works Cited:
James McBride; Color of Water, Simon and Schuster, 2011 Print
Barack Obama; Dreams From My Father, Simon and Schuster, 1995, Print Interview with Michelle Elam; Exploring the Popularization of the Mixed Race American; Stanford University Press, 2011, Print
Race Remixed; New York Time
