Half and Half

June 1, 1998
New Yorker O'Hearn, who was born in Hong Kong of an Irish-American father and a Chinese mother, first tells her own story--she found she could pass as Hawaiian, Italian or even Russian--then goes on to collect first-person accounts of 17 others with biracial or bicultural backgrounds who grew up in the U.S. or emigrated here. The multicultural combinations are complex and varied: a woman with a Chinese-Jamaican mother and a Chinese-American father, a man with an English father and a Jamaican mother ("They are not two shades of brown. They are black and white"), a woman with a mother from Brooklyn and a father from Bombay. Other contributors do not have a racially mixed background but write as strangers in a strange land: a South Vietnamese who escaped by boat and grew up in Southern California; a Hindu from Calcutta who attends school in America. Others reflect Mexican, Iranian and Japanese cultures. The names of some of the contributors are familiar--Gish Jen, Bharati Mukherjee, James McBride, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Lisa See--but many are not, and although the tone throughout ranges from bitter and self-absorbed to satirical, most reveal a quiet sense of humor. Several of the entries have been published previously in anthologies or magazines.

September 1, 1998
Gr. 7^-12. Where are you from? When do you use "we" ? The answers aren't simple for the 18 writers of these personal essays who live and work in the U.S. but aren't sure where they belong. Some are immigrants; most are children or parents of biracial, bicultural families. In her introduction, editor O'Hearn (part Irish American, part Chinese) says she is always a foreigner, wherever she is ("Suspended, I can go anywhere but home"). David Mura writes with tenderness about his daughter: he is third-generation Japanese American, his wife is WASP and a small part Jewish; he sees little of his family's mixed race and culture reflected in the media. Danzy Senna's hilarious parody ("Make Mulattos, not War") says it clearly: multiculturalism is about dealing with racism and power, not about plates of ethnic food. Other contributors include the well-known writers Gish Jen and Francisco Goldman and novelist Julia Alvarez, who makes the point that Latinos as a group embrace many races and differences. Whether they feel part of the mainstream or on the edge, many teens will find themselves in these eloquent memoirs that speak about coming of age and finding a place to call home. ((Reviewed September 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)