THE BEIGING OF AMERICA, BEING MIXED RACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY, takes on race matters and considers them through the firsthand accounts of mixed race people in the United States. Edited by mixed-race scholars Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, this collection consists of 39 poets, writers, teachers, professors, artists and activists, whose personal narratives articulate the complexities of interracial life. THE BEIGING OF AMERICA was prompted by cultural critic/scholar Hua Hsu, who contemplated the changing face and race of U.S. demographics in his 2009 The Atlantic article provocatively titled The End of White America. In it, Hsu acknowledged steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage that undergirded assertions about the beiging of America. THE BEIGING OF AMERICA is an absorbing and thought-provoking collection of stories that explore racial identity, alienation, with people often forced to choose between races and cultures in their search for self-identity. While underscoring the complexity of the mixed-race experience, these unadorned voices offer a genuine, poignant, enlightening and empowering message to all readers.
About the Author: CATHY J. SCHLUND-VIALS is a mixed-race Cambodian and white American. She holds a Joint Appointment as professor in the Department of English and the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Her latest book is Asian America: A Primary Source Reader (2017), co-edited with K. Scott Wong and Jason O. Chang. SEAN FREDERICK FORBES is a mixed race Afro-Latino and the series editor of 2Leaf Press' 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY. He is the co-editor of the series' first book, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA? (2016), and author of the poetry collection, Providencia: A Book of Poems (2013). He is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Connecticut. TARA BETTS is a mixed-race award-winning poet, author and scholar of African American and white French descent. Betts is the author of Break the Habit (2016), Arc and Hue (2009) and the libretto, The Greatest: An Homage to Muhammad Ali (2010). She has appeared in several radio and television programs, and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently a professor at University of Illinois-Chicago.