Thrall

Apr 08, 2013 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

The opening poem, Elegy, for her father, is one of many powerful pieces in this collection.

How the Past Comes Back

Like a shadow across a stone,
gradually --
the name it darkens;

as one enters the world
through language --
like a child learning to speak
then naming
everything; as flower,

the neglected hydrangea
endlessly blossoming --
year after year
each bloom a blue refrain; as

the syllables of birdcall
coalescing in the trees,
repeating
a single word:
forgets;

as the dead bird's bright signature --...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Maurice Carlos Ruffin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I purchased my copy when Ms. Trethewey read at the main New Orleans Public Library in December of 2012. I didn't buy the book simply because I was impressed by the way she read the collection (I was) or because of how cool it was to get a book signed by the current Poet Laureate of the United States (it was pretty cool). I got Thrall because I was intrigued by the conceit behind it: a "mixed race" person dissects the historical attitudes of western culture toward such people and, occasionally, u...more I purchased my copy when Ms. Trethewey read at the main New Orleans Public Library in December of 2012. I didn't buy the book simply because I was impressed by the way she read the collection (I was) or because of how cool it was to get a book signed by the current Poet Laureate of the United States (it was pretty cool). I got Thrall because I was intrigued by the conceit behind it: a "mixed race" person dissects the historical attitudes of western culture toward such people and, occasionally, uses her own youth as a launching point into the exploration.

She does not disappoint. I was enthralled enough to read the book in one sitting, even though I wanted to save some for later. Most of Trethewey's poems are ekphrastic (i.e. she examines a visual work of art, most often here paintings, and builds her pieces from on them) and it was a great help to have the paintings nearby (thank you Google/Wikipedia/Internet) to follow her eyes, mind, and soul as she mulled over "The Miracle of the Black Leg" and the series of "Casta" poems. (The Casta was a colonial Spanish caste system whereby Enlightenment era Spaniards classified humans according to the color of their skin or ethnic background. A Spanish man and a negro woman produced a mulatto. A "mulatto-returning-backwards" (the dark child of light-skinned or white parentage) and a standard mulatto produced a "no-te-entiendo" (translation: "I don't understand you"). And so on. She recasts her white father, black mother, and herself as figures in the various paintings and, by doing so, makes her personal situation representative of western views on race. One particularly affecting poem relies on an 1864 chalk drawing where four scientists dissect a beautiful corpse to discovery the secret of the drowned woman's beauty. There's nothing overtly racial about the drawing. Yet, she substitutes herself for the body and places her father in the skin of the man with the scalpel to stunning effect. She is able to eviscerate the hypocrisy of the Enlightenment age and her enlightened poet dad in one flick of the knife blade.

The poems where she explores her relationship with her deceased father without the benefit of ekprasis are less compelling, but they only suffer by comparison. They are, by their nature, simpler, more direct, but not without their own charms.

This is an important collection and well worth reading in the age of post-racialism. (less)

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Dec 01, 2012 Khara House rated it 5 of 5 stars

In this slender collection of poems, Trethewey takes us backward and forward in time, establishing Thrall as a collection as much about past as it is about present---or rather, how the two are inextricably linked through history, through identity, and in discovering truth and self and meaning. The collection’s first poem, “Elegy,” reflects the poet’s longing---a sometimes ruthless longing---to make sense of and (re)discover the world.

As the child of a black woman and white man, Trethewey boldly...more In this slender collection of poems, Trethewey takes us backward and forward in time, establishing Thrall as a collection as much about past as it is about present---or rather, how the two are inextricably linked through history, through identity, and in discovering truth and self and meaning. The collection’s first poem, “Elegy,” reflects the poet’s longing---a sometimes ruthless longing---to make sense of and (re)discover the world.

As the child of a black woman and white man, Trethewey boldly confronts issues of racial identity, cultural and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and the shifts in the landscape of racial understanding through history. Trethewey wrote in a previous poem that history, or the ghost of history, “lies down beside me, rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm”; in Thrall, she seems to give in to that embrace, take on that ghost, and give it a new face. In “Taxonomy,” a series of poems based on 18th-century casta paintings by Juan Rodriguez Juarez, Trethewey pairs an examination of mixed race---which Trethewey terms in one instance “an equation of blood”---with mixed tongues, pairing English and Spanish to blend her form to content. Through a written representation of the Enlightenment era’s fascination with taxonomy---which included racial and ethnographic categorizations and distinctions, and the perceived exotica of mixed-blood couplings---Trethewey allows us to witness an historical fascination with what were perceived as at once exotic and colonized blacks. Trethewey captures both this fascination and the somewhat hostile undertones---the heavy “weight of blood,” a mother contorting in paired watchfulness of her mixed-race child and perhaps wariness of the “transient” and “myopic” father—in a “catalog / of mixed blood.” Through a careful and raw examination of both a cultural and deeply personal history, she shows both the beauty and horrors of race, classifications, and (particularly mixed) heritage. (Read my full review at Our Lost Jungle)(less)

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Oct 21, 2012 Joseph Geskey rated it 4 of 5 stars

A beautiful collection. However, there is one theme that bothers me and prevents me from giving this 5 stars. In "Enlightment" the author writes, " a mans pursuit of knowledge is greater/than his shortcomings, the limits of his vision," and in other poems she describes the earlier eras of science such as anatomy ("Miracle of the Black Leg," "Knowledge," and "The Americans," but despite the supposed insight that cooler, objective pursuits would render, the reader is left with more of a visceral,...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Jaylia3 rated it 5 of 5 stars

A radio interview I heard with the newest U.S. Poet Laureate caught my attention so I approached this slim book eagerly even though I am not a regular reader of poetry. In spite of my inexperience Natasha Trethewey’s poems often moved and in some cases captivated me. Many of the early poems in the book explore the historical contexts of Trethewey’s mixed race heritage by detailed and nuanced examinations of colonial era paintings with multi-race families, paintings that were designed to illustra...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I got to read an advance copy of Natasha Trethewey's upcoming book Thrall by signing up on NetGalley.com. Thanks to Mark Letcher for telling me about the website.

* * *

Natasha Trethewey, the newest U.S. poet laureate, uses Casta paintings and ekphrastic poetry to examine what it means to be mixed race, to be wanted and forgotten, accepted and disowned, in her forthcoming collection, Thrall. Throughout this slim volume she also reflects on the relationship with her poet father, who now lives in Ca...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Robert Beveridge rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone, really.

Shelves: amazon-vine, finished, owned-and-still-own

Natasha Trethewey, Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)

Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.

Politicized poetry—and when I say “politicized”, I'm not just talking flat-out political poetry here, but also what one might call “the poetry of social consciousness”—is always a problematic thing. One hundred percent of the time. So much so that back when I was still a working poet and thus entitled in some small way to comment on such things and offer advice t...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Grady rated it 5 of 5 stars

Natasha Trethewey, the Timeless Poet

2007 Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Trethewey gifts us with this rather extraordinary collection of poems that explore relationships between parent and child in a marriage of two people from different cultures: Trethewey is the mixed race progeny of a white father (a poet) and a darker skinned Mexican mother. This platform provides a complex stage setting for discussions of heritage, depth of cultural bonds and influences, and a particularly fine examinat...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Naomi rated it 5 of 5 stars

I would have to say that this is among the best collections of poetry I have ever read. I loved NATIVE GUARD, but THRALL is even better.I devoured it on the way home from the Decatur Book Festival, where I had the good fortune of hearing Tretheway read. (She was the keynote speaker.) I don't think I paused for breath during the flight, and the work has stayed with me like a vibrant force resonating beneath my skin.

The collection is in many ways a memoir of linked poems, many ekphrastic explorati...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Bob Lopez rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Elegy - Sad one about her father, ostensibly about fly fishing w/ her father.
"You must remember how/the river seeped in over your boots/and how you grew heavier with that defeat"
"You kept casting/your line, and when it did not come back/empty, it was tangled with mine"

Miracle of the Black Leg - Poem in 4 distinct sections traces the provenance of a story: that of a white person losing a leg and having a black leg attached as a replacement. It seems to trace artwork exclusively. In every one the...more Elegy - Sad one about her father, ostensibly about fly fishing w/ her father.
"You must remember how/the river seeped in over your boots/and how you grew heavier with that defeat"
"You kept casting/your line, and when it did not come back/empty, it was tangled with mine"

Miracle of the Black Leg - Poem in 4 distinct sections traces the provenance of a story: that of a white person losing a leg and having a black leg attached as a replacement. It seems to trace artwork exclusively. In every one the black donor is treated merely as a sacrifice.

On Captivity - Seems to be about a slave ship over taken by the captives (this based solely on the epigraph)--or, more specifically, how the sailors covered themselves after being stripped: by using pages from the bible.
"Think of it:/a woman holding before her/the torn leaves of Genesis/and a man covering himself/with the Good Book's/frontispiece--his own name/inscribed on the page."

Taxonomy - In four parts, one each for four paintings by Juan Rodriguez Juarez. The paintings are apparently about different races of people coming together and their offspring. Titles like "De Espanol y De India Produce Mestiso" (itself used for the dust jacket) really spell the bi-racial nature of the subject matter.
"How not to see/in this gesture/the mind/of the colony"

Kitchen Maid - Again about a painting.
Knowledge - Yep. This one sounds like a medical drawing about lady parts.

The Americans - A series of 3 poems (Dissecting the White Negro, Blood, Help), all of which, again, seem to be examining works of art which depict bi-racial subjects.
Dissecting: "to strip from the flesh/the specious skin" and "so/deep the tincture/-see it!-/we still know white from not"
Blood: this one about a light-skinned girl sitting in a field full of black people working behind her: "Mezzo,/intermediate, how different she's rendered/from the dark kin working the fields behind her./If not for the ray of light appearing as if from beyond/the canvas, we might miss them--three figures/in the near distance, small as an after thought." Ouch.

Later, right around Mythology, the book shifts its focus from the external exploration of art to a more internal exploration of herself, her history, her identity as bi-racial (although Mano Prieta I think is about a photograph of the poet as a young girl and her mother's hand).

Torna Atras - A return to scrutinizing artwork, this time a poem about a descendent regressing.(less)

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Nov 16, 2012 Serena rated it 5 of 5 stars

Thrall by Natasha Trethewey examines the lines between father and daughter and the African-American experience through a set of personal and analytical poems focused on race and culture. In “Miracle of the Black Leg,” Trethewey examines the juxtaposition of white and black men in paintings and other artwork in which the leg of one man is taken and attached to the thigh of another man. There are similarities in pain stricken faces in some images, paralleling their similar situations, but there ar...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Maria rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, reviewed

"Thrall" is marked by luxurious language, intensity of intellect, and troubling insight. It is a disturbingly gorgeous collection of poems that assaults cliches on race, family, history, personhood. The language is so sparse, it's like a stallion: sleek and muscular and instantly admirable. Some examples:

"mist at the banks like a net / settling around us"

"the boy's mother contorts, watchful / her neck twisting on its spine, red beads / yoked at her throat like a necklace of blood / her face so b...more "Thrall" is marked by luxurious language, intensity of intellect, and troubling insight. It is a disturbingly gorgeous collection of poems that assaults cliches on race, family, history, personhood. The language is so sparse, it's like a stallion: sleek and muscular and instantly admirable. Some examples:

"mist at the banks like a net / settling around us"

"the boy's mother contorts, watchful / her neck twisting on its spine, red beads / yoked at her throat like a necklace of blood / her face so black she nearly disappears"

"...the boy is a palimpsest of paint--layers of color, history rendering him / that precise shade of in-between"

"and I saw the rifle for what it is: a relic / sharp as sorrow, the barrel hollow as regret."

(There are so many more.)

This collection of poems is complex, deep, rich, rewarding, lyrical. It is full of mourning, full of exultation. As a poet, there are few books that have engaged me so foundationally. Maybe I'm biased. I'm of mixed race ancestry like Trethewey. I grapple with the taxonomies and stereotypes of racial mixes and meaning, no matter where I find myself.

But this is not just a book for people who yearn for some kind of ethnic acceptance or continuity. Otherwise this volume would be nearer to propaganda, or political science writing. Instead, Trethewey speaks about inner divides, cultural ambivalence, our universal estrangements. She never sounds preachy, yet there is a sense of the prophet: one who speaks. One who dares to speak what is hidden, shameful, unrecognized. One who calls glory down on the world, broken as it is.

The power in this collection derives in part from her stellar poetic craft, but her technique and mastery of language are just one component of my admiration. I couldn't say Trethewey is America's greatest poet, or the finest in diction and magic, nor is she equal to the eternal greats. Still she has crafted a sublime edifice of beautiful poetic steel, welded by the hot glowing spark of brutal honesty.

"Thrall" is full of poems that speak about not just Trethewey's own mixed heritage, but on the co-mingled nature of pain, desire, relationships, past. Everywhere in this world, there is mixture. There is division. There are inner/outer schemes. We are disappointed, disapproved of, denied.

As delicate as some of these subjects are, this collection is not timid. By deft handling of flaw and family, sin and sweetness, "Thrall" gives me courage to write from the authentic, difficult history of my own experience, without varnish or arrogance. Thank you, Trethewey, for beautiful, brave poems that move beyond pain to a place of some measure of redemption.(less)

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Oct 15, 2012 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

The title of this book is appropriate. Poetry is a way to work things out, and Trethewey has been in thrall to her mixed race (Black mother, white father) heritage from the beginning of her highly successful (for a poet)career. The book begins with an elegy to poet's father. Like Rita Dove and Elizabeth Alexander, Trethewey has a knack for discovering curious anecdotes and legends of Black history, through which she can view current race relations and her inner identity. "The Miracle of the Blac...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

4.5 stars

Thumbed through this when it came into the library. I originally just wanted to check out "Miracle of the black leg", which recounts several paintings of a 14th century account of 2 doctor-saints who transplanted the leg of a dead Ethiopian onto a white amputee. Her analogies and imagery were enchanting and I got drawn into the rest of the book.

The author is US Poet Laureate, and the poems are all short reads with some variety in format. Many of the poems are inspired by, or are about c...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Kristy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, racism, american-history, spain, postcolonial

"it is the typology of taint, / of stain: blemish: sullying spot..."
- The Book of Castas

"... When I think of this now, / I see how the past holds us captive, / its beautiful ruin etched on the mind's eye:"
- Enlightenment

I think this line strongly sums up the theme of these poems: a gallery of pieces depicting the complicated history of multiracial America. Natasha Trethewey's poems disentangle the mappings of "purity" and "taint" in racial identity, with repeated motifs of scientific terms, exo...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Michelle Cristiani rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

Dear Natasha Trethewey,
I write poems. And still, I didn't know you could DO that: write a series of poems inspired by a series of paintings, as if you we were walking through a museum with you, hearing you recount your memories, while taking in art in another form. I didn't know you could take one moment from your past - a powerful one - and make it the punchline, when what inspired the memory was the setting, the place. I didn't know a person could expertly mix high-intellect verse and every da...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: multiculti, poetry

The first half or so of this collection is a tough read--focused on art and stories from times past of multiracial events, which slowly throughout the book combine with the author's own mixed race background.

Some of the historical poems made me cringe with their power; the personal poems resonated deeply, the author clearly delineating for the reader that complicated place where as adults we both love our parents and yet can see the truth about them and begin to face the complicated ways in whic...more

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Oct 03, 2012 Libby rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

I'm not sure if this collection is slightly less exquisite than Native Guard, or if it was just a more difficult collection for me to read. It touches on Trethewey's relationship with her father, which seems more fraught than that with her mother, and it also has even more historical background than Native Guard did.

Many of the poems in Thrall are inspired by paintings, and I wish prints of all the paintings could have been included. Themes of race and racism definitely continue.

Poems from this...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Patti K rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

This 2012 book of poetry by the current Poet Laureate is I think brilliant.
There are several historical renderings of paintings that display white
masters with their Indian or Black children. Trewethey is also mixed race
and meditates on what that has meant in times of empire. Spanish
conquistadors with their mestizo children and so forth. She has an easy
touch with this serious topic of being in-between races. There are also
childhood poems about her parents; her father was white and she idolized
hi...more

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Jan 20, 2013 K rated it 5 of 5 stars

AMAZING!! Trethewey covers, with almost academic skill and depth, the depth and mazes not only of race in the Americas ( some of her most brilliant poems are set in Spanish colonies, addressing the Spanish "system" of classifying race and mixed race) but of personal emotional narratives as well. She also pulls from art history brilliantly throughout the collection, at one point describing the painting on the book's cover in a poem addressing the 'mestizo/a', the now-outdated term a mixed child b...more AMAZING!! Trethewey covers, with almost academic skill and depth, the depth and mazes not only of race in the Americas ( some of her most brilliant poems are set in Spanish colonies, addressing the Spanish "system" of classifying race and mixed race) but of personal emotional narratives as well. She also pulls from art history brilliantly throughout the collection, at one point describing the painting on the book's cover in a poem addressing the 'mestizo/a', the now-outdated term a mixed child born to a Caucasian (Spaniard) father and a mother of colour. (She also addresses the 'mulatto/a".)

Not only are her poems---in their half-stark, half -substantive and meaningful diction--- truly remarkable on their own; but the fact that her words address race and colour and history in such a perfect, deep, spot-on, and meaningful way, make them simply superb. In both subject and substance ( and especially in her brilliant, fluid marriage of the two), these poems are a masterpiece.
How this poet must have studied! Everything! Not only is she a writer, she delves into Art History authoritatively and uses it in her poems ( from the stance of one half-turned figure to the description of the way the mixed child turns in his mother's arms to the look and smile on the mother!s face) Trethewey not so much *uses* as weaves her clear understanding of art analysis to make her poems true masterpieces.

The fact that a poet (like Trethewey herself) is mixed obviously doesn't always mean that s/he innately understands every aspect of colourism. But Trethewey has dedicated her life to the intellectual and social study of almost everything, especially the social and political implications of race. She uses not only her personal experiences and emotions but also this formidable intellect to create one of the greatest collections on race, history, and personal narrative of the century. (No joke).

Everyone needs to read this collection and its nuances of race, culture, and colour.

Trethewey also writes about her own emotions; not to be missed is "Elegy", about a fishing trip with her father and in which she reflects on being his daughter and being a poet, and the sometimes uncomfortable intersection of the two.

This is possibly one of the best and substantive book of poems I have ever read. Trethewey not only needs to stay US Poet Laureate; she needs to win a Nobel.

Simply stunning.(less)

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Nov 12, 2012 Sean Brower rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry, all-time-awesome

Thrall is stunning; the poems themselves, the theme and collection, the voice, the ekphrasis, the personal – everything just works with Trethewey’s latest book. In contrast to Domestic Work’s rigidness and telling-style, Thrall is alive within its ekphrastic constraint; even Native Guard, which I felt was fantastic, does not quite stand up to the completeness I feel when reading this collection. As a reader, I feel included and intimate with the speaker (something that was missing from DM), as w...more Thrall is stunning; the poems themselves, the theme and collection, the voice, the ekphrasis, the personal – everything just works with Trethewey’s latest book. In contrast to Domestic Work’s rigidness and telling-style, Thrall is alive within its ekphrastic constraint; even Native Guard, which I felt was fantastic, does not quite stand up to the completeness I feel when reading this collection. As a reader, I feel included and intimate with the speaker (something that was missing from DM), as well as emotionally charged and touched. Great poesis, this.

“Elegy” begins the collection by offering a taste of the motifs to come. While Trethewey varies her form enough to keep the poems moving, she also uses the couplet to great effect; the continuing couplets (and later, tercets) bring both a meditative quality to her poetry, and a harder hitting emotional punch. The images of a river, flowing memory and the uses of knowledge, and “my back to where I know we are headed” all seem to find their way in each of her pieces as well (5). Much of the collection, appropriately, deals with slavery (not only of the body, but of the mind) and how those of perceived minority are thralls not only to other people, but to their “classifications.” While obvious even in the subtitles of “Taxonomy,” the brilliance (and delicacy) of Trethewey’s handling and understanding of this material is well showcased in “Knowledge”; the cold, calculating, scientific distance of men is handled so deftly that I, as a reader, can still feel Trethewey’s indictment of those men just as much as I can feel their methodological excitement. That takes practice.

Of course, Trethewey’s own personal history is what really gives this collection a home. “Enlightenment,” “Rotation,” “Bird in the House,” and “Artifact” all offer glimpses of a home life that is ensnared in power relations – historical, societal, and definitely familial. The ending lines from “Artifact” – “and I saw the rifle for what it is: a relic / sharp as sorrow, the barrel hollow as regret” – symbolize the struggle these pieces seek to explore: the conflict between our future and the ideas and objects of our past which contain, constrain, and enthrall us (53). “On Happiness” and “Vespertina Cognitio” to me, are the real endings to Trethewey’s journey; while “Illumination” conceptualizes an end, it’s the “guarantee” that the “rhythm of what goes out / comes back, comes back, comes back” that is Trethewey’s epiphany – whether for better or worse (74-5).
(less)

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Feb 11, 2013 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, poetry, book-club

The most recent collection by our current Poet Laureate explores America's and the poet's history, through art and through her reminisces about her father. The poet's mixed race identity is vital to the poems and she is a brilliant choice for Poet Laureate in the age of Obama. The poems are full of thoughts and ideas that bear repeated reading. Highest recommendation.

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Dec 19, 2012 Tammy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

This is the follow-up volume of poetry to Trethewey's 2007 Pulitzer Prize–winning Native Guard and it clearly shows why she is the new Poet Laurette of the United States.

She beautifully blends her personal family history into the history of America, especially the deep south. She is an interracial child, when a black woman and white man marrying was not only dangerous but illegal in her parents home state. She uses her poetry to show the struggles of not only southern America but of many forgot...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Alana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

This collection is wonderful -- possible better than Native Guard. Tretheway moves the reader through complex issues of race, from the castas of colonial Mexico to her own childhood experiences. In addition to the excellent craft of the poetry, the book itself is a work of art, one of those rich volumes that reminds us why we need real books in life, rather than digital everything.

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Sep 23, 2012 Liam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: poetry

These very accessible poems reveal two stories that of Natasha's family life (if we believe the poems are autobiographical and I trust they are) and the intersection of the interracial relations. I learned from these and want to read them again next year or so. Her images and metaphors fit well so I gave this five stars.

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Apr 21, 2013 Terri rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, poetry, currently-reading-bookclub

This is an excellent, provocative collection of poetry by our current poet laureate, Natasha Trethewey. In it, she ruminates on colonialism, race, and her relationship with her white father. It is a perfect collection to mirror many of things that we, as a county, are also reflecting on. Highly recommended.

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Feb 23, 2013 Dearwassily rated it 3 of 5 stars

There are two kinds of poetry: Anne Carson, and then everything else. I read this volume because someone posted on the Tumblr a line from it: "I was that ruthless." I love that line. Poems for her father, really, so what can I say? Aren't all daughters that ruthless in their own ways?

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Apr 28, 2013 Caroline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Clear, insightful and precise - The author wields her poetry like a scalpel, cutting past the illusion of what society has held to be truth and hitting the emotional core of race and family relationships. Great poetry should speak to the soul and this surely does.

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Dec 05, 2012 Christine rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: All poetry lovers

Shelves: poetry

Read my review on Five Points, (the blog). Thrall.

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Apr 08, 2013 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This is one of the best books of poetry I've read in a long while. Trethewey manages to blend poems about 18th-cent. paintings of 'mixed-race' children and personal stories from her own life in a wonderfully crafted collection.

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