There’s a huge push recently in the publishing world for #OwnVoices stories, and I have to say that I am absolutely loving it.
To start with, I enjoy being able to see the world from other people’s perspective, to learn about their cultures, their experiences, their struggles, and to see where they come from. Plus, how could I not love seeing people who have been silenced finding a voice? These books absolutely have a place (namely, on my brand-new shelves, though the more realistic place is in the mess that is currently my home library, but let’s not go there).
What I want to talk about today, though, is something a little more near and dear to my heart, and something I’ve been thinking about a lot as these #OwnVoices books become publicized and pushed and sought after more and more: where do biracial authors fit into this movement in the publishing world? Is there also a place for our voices?
Pardon the pun (though you did come to this blog, so I feel you should expect it), but this isn’t a simple case of black and white. There are so many nuanced perspectives that I feel like aren’t gaining the same amount of traction, and that’s not to take away from any that are. It’s just a conversation I haven’t seen, personally.
Being a Biracial Bookwyrm Child
Maybe I’m biased, being biracial myself. I grew up with my white mother and her very white (Scotch-Irish) family. Despite having faced racism from a young age, it never even occurred to me that I was brown until another kid pointed it out (not unkindly). I had always assumed I was white like my family, right? Ha!
The first book I actually ever remember reading that had a black character that I could see myself in was Animorphs by K. A. Applegate, and Cassie was on the cover of one. I made my mother buy it for me.
I was eight years old, newly aware of the fact that I wasn’t white, and I’d never seen a brown girl that looked like me on the cover of a book before. I immediately fell in love with her. She wanted to be a vet? So did I! She liked a boy named Jake? Me, too! She hung out with super cool, super clueless blue horse-aliens with killer tails? Okay, so maybe we were a teeensy bit different, and I’ve obviously never gotten over that, but still.
As a child, the majority of books I picked up with characters that looked like me ended up having stories that I couldn’t, nor wanted to, relate to, because frankly, they sounded like they got shafted.
A lot of them dealt with pain and racism and things I hadn’t yet wrapped my mind around and didn’t understand, other than knowing that I didn’t want to be a part of that. But the older I got, the more it became clear that I wasn’t allowed to be white, either, and I was, in fact, shoehorned into becoming a “Black girl,” while having no idea what that actually meant.
The Biracial Experience is unique
Not just because of the fact that biracial can mean almost anything. Black and white? Sure. Asian and Black? Yup. Korean and First Nations? Check. There are a lot of freaking possible combinations for someone to be biracial. Or heck, multiracial. The fun thing is that exactly none of their experiences are going to be identical, and they’re all going to differ from their parents’ experiences, too. Because that’s just how things work.
For so many biracial people, myself included, it’s been described as straddling the lines of two worlds, but never really knowing where you fit in.
I’m too dark to be white, and I’m too white to be black. Not to mention that my white family raised me, so what do I know about being black? Pffft. Shoot, I don’t even like fried chicken. (Though, as it turns out, the best fried chicken I ever had … reluctantly … was cooked by my mother’s Puerto Rican boyfriend, so … way to smash those stereotypes.)
What I find when I read books focused on the black experience is that they don’t represent my experience, and society makes it clear that I’m not allowed to join the white narrative, either.
So where does that leave me, and others like me? While I enjoy reading #OwnVoices books by black authors, and I can certainly relate to a lot of their experiences, it still sometimes feels foreign to me. Worse yet, even when there are biracial characters present, they’re almost always defined by their minority status. They are either Asian or Black or Indigenous characters, because of course they could never self-identify as white. While it’s a true representation of a struggle that’s unique to biracial people, it also seems like it’s never particularly discussed in literature. It’s just a given that this character will be marketed as this minority, and we wash our hands of it.
Other Biracial Bookwyrms’ Experiences
There’s an absolutely fabulous guest post written by Jackie Lau on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about her experience with biracial characters in romance, as a biracial reader and author. There’s so many poignant phrases in this post, and I highly recommend reading it, from her discussion about not being convenient diversity points to feeling like a fraud for claiming her minority half. What really struck me was this line: “Sometimes being biracial is not so much being both as it is being neither.“
On Books For Littles, Ashia not only compiles a handy list of books she recommends for multiracial families, but she weaves in her own experience of being multiracial, and there was so much that I could relate to in this. And that ending? *chef’s kiss* She tackles what may seem like simple questions like, “What are you?” and, “Where are you from,” and breaks down exactly what someone means when they ask that. In short, she’s tired of feeling like she has to justify her “otherness.” And aren’t we all?
One last one, just to round it out, is Jillian Feinberg, talking about diversity in literature from her viewpoint as a biracial Latina. Her post is very in depth and well thought out, so I’d recommend just reading it for the full view. It touches on so many things, from how her voice as the only Latina in class was shut down and dismissed to how she struggled to find literature that embraced both parts of her identity. She says, “Growing up as a biracial child, you’re likely to be confused even more so than other people. You’re stuck between two or more cultures, which can cause an identity crisis.” It’s yet another common thread I see among biracial people.
Books With Biracial Characters
You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you? While I haven’t seen any books pushed specifically for their biracial rep, I have read some good ones or had some highly recommended to me, which really capture the struggle that sometimes comes with not quite knowing where you belong.
Wow, loved this Sammie, and I didn’t know you were biracial. You definitely have a unique perspective and you made me think more about biracial rep in books. I’ve read a few books where a character’s biracial ethnicity is called out, but not very many. And I’m happy to know The Year of the Witching has rep!
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I am! People are always so surprised when they meet my mother, who lives in the same town. xD It doesn’t seem like many actually deal with the experience of being biracial, even if they have biracial characters, so I’m hoping that more ownvoices and diverse reads means we might see more of those!
Oh my gosh! Thank you for writing this! I am multiracial myself, being Polynesian, Native American, and White, and never knowing where I fit in. I’ve had people ask me, “what are you?” and I’ve had people tell me, “Yeah, but you’re white passing so you shouldn’t have issues finding characters that represent you.” Like, what?? Anyways, thank you again for writing this! This really spoke to me!
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Ugh, I hate the “what are you” question. An alien who’s about to eat your face if you don’t stop your nonsense, yo. xD I’m so sorry you have to deal with stupid comments like that. And I hate the white-passing thing, like your background and culture mean nothing because you physically may LOOK close to a character. *rolls eyes* Because that’s what really matters.
Thank you! I am sorry you get comments too! It’s nuts sometimes!
I am not that connected with the Native American side of my family but I am very close to the Polynesian side, and that is the culture I am used to. It is definitely hard to find characters who come from the same background and culture!
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You make a lot of valid points. The movement has done a great job of bringing race representation to books, but almost all those characters are one race, not two or more. I have biracial cousins and they have kids, and I’d love to be able to recommend books to them for the little ones. And I’ll never get why people insist on classifying bi and multi racial people by their minorities only. It makes no sense.
And I don’t think loving Fried Chicken is solely a Black thing. My mom’s family is descendant from German immigrants and it’s not a wedding in my family without Fried Chicken (and bear). In fact, it’s my mom’s favorite food.
I also want to ask the same thing about disabled voices. As someone who grew up with a lot of medical problems and is invisibly disabled I’ve also never truly seen myself in books.
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I mean, I can tell you why. Because race relations in the US are fraught, and it wasn’t that long ago that there was a “one drop” rule (which is not a unique concept and has been a concept in a myriad of places, including with Jewish people). It’s just a superiority thing that’s been culturally ingrained. I doubt people even consciously think about it.
Oh, it’s *definitely* not. Friend chicken is one of my mother’s favorite meals, and it doesn’t get much whiter than her (Scots-Irish and English haha). Which is why I think it’s so funny that there’s such a stereotype that blacks love fried chicken. It’s like the cops love donuts stereotype. Who the heck doesn’t love donuts?! Donuts make me sick, and I STILL love them. xD But stereotypes don’t have to make sense, I guess.
Oh! I actually did a post on that a few months back, with the same thought! I read Super Sick by Allison Alexander, who relates her experience with her chronic illness with the chronically ill characters she sees in media, and it really made me think about the disabled characters or chronically ill characters I’ve seen in books!
I’m so glad that you wrote this. I may not be biracial, but I understand that feeling of not feeling like you’re enough for either race, and I could definitely relate to pretty much everything that you said.
And I appreciate you so much for being so open about this and sharing your experiences with us. <3 I love you big sis!
I’m both glad and sorry that you could relate. <3 Thank you so much. Felt nice to talk about it for a change, since I never do, especially with where I live. xD Love ya!
There’s alot going on with this post and I’m not sure where to begin. Everyone deserves to see themselves in a story written by someone who knows their experience. That being said stories featuring non white characters are a very small percentage of what’s published and then on top of that many of those are written by white authors who will often write biracials characters. I saw none of that acknowledged in your post. You also specifically started with the #Ownvoices narrative but included books by non biracial authors like Justina Ireland and Alexis Henderson while leaving out actual biracial authors like Natasha Diaz, Alexa Martin, Kelly McWilliams, and Andie J Christopher who have published books recently with biracial characters.
I don’t even know what point you were trying to make mentioning fried chicken.
You bring up a lot of good points, but I think you’re wanting this post to do something that it was never intended to. This isn’t a diatribe against the publishing world, nor is it meant to call out non-biracial authors for writing biracial characters. This is simply my thoughts, from my (very limited) perspective, about what I personally am looking for in biracial rep and how it’s different than a lot of the ownvoices books I’ve seen pushed lately and that I’ve read.
I’m really glad you brought up those authors, as I’d never heard of them (other than Natasha Diaz), though a few were recommended to me by a friend yesterday. This is a sci-fi/fantasy blog, and that’s basically all that I read (with few exceptions), and it does seem like biracial #ownvoices authors are more prevalent in contemporary and romance (neither of which I read). So maybe part of the discussion is a genre thing, too. I will for sure be checking out Agnes at the End of the World, though!
The fried chicken thing was a joke, based on the stereotype around here (which I can’t even begin tell you how many times I’ve heard it) that black people love fried chicken. Sorry, never said it was a good joke. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you so much for this post, I think we do tend to categorize people into ‘this or that’ when there are many who walk in several worlds at once. It’s a tricky thing to navigate when speaking to identity. There’s also the thing of because you’re many things some people will never see you as enough of one or the other, like what is going o with Rebecca Roanhorse right now in the indigenous community.
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Ugh, I heard about that, and it’s so frustrating and, I imagine, disheartening. My (adopted) father is full Native (half American Indian, half First nations), but his parents were off the rez since they were kids, and he and his siblings were all raised without any cultural contacts or association with the rez (though, now I have a couple aunts and cousins who are officially members of the tribe now). It’s hard to qualify what constitutes culture and heritage. If she’s told these stories by her mother and it’s been passed down, who’s to say that’s not her culture? Officially being a member of a tribe is not a qualifying factor to actually be Native, even though I understand their fierce desire to protect their culture (which has historically been systematically destroyed and erased).
Thank you for this. Being biracial is such a weird no-man’s-land of being in so many ways. I’m half Chinese, but since I’m at least third generation American in all directions, I don’t have any Chinese accent / mannerisms / whatever. Except for skin tone (especially when I’m tan) and eye shape, I’m completely white-passing. And given the books we had when I was growing up? I certainly didn’t see the bi-racial —or even Chinese — side of me as the main characters in the books I read, so I’ve always identified white. I’m so glad that my biracial niece and nephew have books they can read which show mixed race characters as the good guys and not just the sidekicks.
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I didn’t realize that about you! How interesting. Oh gosh, I don’t think I actually even read of a Chinese character in a book until … well into my teen years, probably? Maybe even older than that, sadly.
I think it’s so important that they know that they can also be heroes and don’t have to just be the background sidekicks or token characters. :3
Such a great post Sammie. Thank you for sharing your thoughts <3
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Thank you!
This is such a great post, and you raise so many good points! I’m not biracial so I can’t even begin to imagine how frustrating it must be to find so few characters who share my experiences–especially when, like all people and their relationship with their identity, every single biracial person is going to have a different experience of what being biracial means. I could probably count on one hand the amount of books I’ve read with biracial protagonists, so that’s something I need to improve going forward!
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Thank you! It’s definitely a different experience for everyone, but I think there are commonalities, like the struggle to find an identity and not knowing where to fit in. I haven’t read that many, either! It doesn’t seem to be as common in fantasy, which is what I normally read.
[…] shared their half-yearly bookish statistics. ⌘ Sammie from The Bookwyrm’s Den talks asks where biracial voices fit in. ⌘ Kriti from Armed with a Book featured me for Armed with a Bingo. ⌘ Cait from Paper Fury […]
I have almost all the books on your list on my TBR. Thank you for this list.
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Hope you get a chance to read them soon! 🙂
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