Mixed race people are all around us. We find them in fiction and reality—in literature, on screen, among our friends and families, and, literally or figuratively, in ourselves. Yet they rarely take center stage in our most treasured cultural, national, and even personal narratives. In societies where monoraciality is the sine qua non of cultural membership, mixed race identities are devalued and relegated to the margins. Yet mixed race people embody the critique of monoraciality as a fantasy of biological and cultural essentialism.
This digital exhibit aims to document the prevalence and significance of fictional mixed race characters in our literary history and visual culture.
The exhibit is the creation of Clark University’s senior capstone seminar as part of its contribution to an initiative on mixed race studies launched by the Asian American Literary Review (AALR) and collaboratively coordinated by scholars of mixed race studies at several universities.
For more information on the Asian American Literary Review‘s Mixed Race Initiative, please visit: http://aalrmag.org/mixed-race-initiative/
For the MIX LIT Capstone course’s companion blog, please visit: http://clarkenglishcapstone2013.wordpress.com/