An unflinching look at the challenges and misunderstandings mixed-race
people face in family spaces and intimate relationships across their
varying cultural backgrounds
In this emotionally powerful and intellectually provocative blend of
memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, scholar and essayist Samira
Mehta reflects on many facets of being multiracial.
Born to a white American and a South Asian immigrant, Mehta grew up
feeling more comfortable with her mother's family than her
father's--they never carried on conversations in languages she couldn't
understand or blamed her for finding the food was too spicy. In
adulthood, she realized that some of her Indian family's assumptions
about the world had become an indelible part of her--and that her
well-intentioned parents had not known how to prepare her for a world
that would see her as a person of color.
Popular belief assumes that mixedness gives you the ability to feel at
home in more than one culture, but the flipside shows you can feel just
as alienated in those spaces. In 7 essays that dissect her own
experiences with a frankness tempered by generosity, Mehta confronts
questions about:
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authenticity and belonging;
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conscious and unconscious cultural inheritance;
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appropriate mentorship;
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the racism of people who love you.
The Racism of People Who Love You invites people of mixed race into
the conversation on race in America and the melding of found and
inherited cultures of hybrid identity.
