Globally, the number of multiracial people is exploding. The United States alone currently counts at least seven million multiracial inhabitants. By the year 2050 more than one in five Americans will be claiming mixed ancestry. Yet it was only as recently as 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau began to allow citizens to check off as many racial categories as are applicable—White, African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, American Indian and Alaska Native. Previously, Americans were allowed to check off only one, leaving multiracial people invisible and unaccounted for.

Fortunately, a greater awareness of multiracial people is underway. Dozens of web sites devoted to multiracial issues have sprung up across the Internet, and novels and memoirs on the topic have proliferated. In Mixed Chandra Prasad has created the first anthology of its kind, bringing together eighteen stories by both new and noted writers about the experience of coming from a multiracial background.

With contributors such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Cristina Garcia, Peter Ho Davies, and Mat Johnson, and an illuminating introduction by Rebecca Walker, Mixed gives voice to the multiple identities of the rising generation. It also provides some of the most fresh, engaging, and vital original literary fiction in recent memory.

Published August 17, 2006 by W. W. Norton & Company