cover image Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

. W. W. Norton & Company, $16.95 (326pp) ISBN 978-0-393-32786-1

Pradsad's Outwitting the Job Market included meditations on diversity and the workplace; her choice of fiction over nonfiction for this anthology may reflect her own shifts: her novel One of the Boys is due in 2007. All of the contributors are from mixed or multiracial backgrounds; Prasad notes in her foreword that there is ""some commonality"" among them: ""being proof of an increasingly global society, acting as the solder between various communities, straddling cultural expectations."" In ""Footnote,"" memoirist Carmit Delman (Burnt Bread and Chutney) writes of a quarter-Indian girl raised in West Virginia who takes a carnal route to discovering identity. Mat Johnson's ""Gift Giving"" uses the typical story of the cuckold (the author dedicates the story to an ex-fiance) to dispel numerous cliches of biracial coupledom: ""The women I knew who socialized white always had some mythic white ex-boyfriend to whom no Negro could compare."" In ""The Caste System,"" Mary Yukari Waters (The Laws of Evening) sends Sarah Rexford to Japan with her grandmother for a visit to her mother's grave, and to her aunt Kimiko. There are short author bios written by the writers themselves, and thumbnail photos of each author. At the end of each of the 18 stories, the writer gives a brief description of what inspired it.