A lot of developing children have the tendency to identify with the racial group of their parents. However, children of mixed race usually have a harder time doing the same because they cannot fully relate racially with one parent or another. The book, Mixed, edited by Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, and Christina Gomez contains the self narratives of Multiracial students who went to Dartmouth College and their adventures as a mixed person in America. Although each story is individual and unique, a common theme that spans most of the students’ stories is their ambivalence on what it means to be a part of two races. We will be focusing on the narratives of Yuki Kondo-Sah and Allison Bates in particular on their search for their identities…show more content… Both of these biracial students have spent most of their lives immersed in one of their racial identities over the other. For example, Yuki is more accustomed to Japanese culture since she spent a large portion of her life living in Japan and speaking Japanese to her mother. Similarly, Allison is more accustomed to American culture because most of her life has been spent with her white American mother and relatives. As a result of their unfamiliarity with their other race growing up, Yuki and Allison always felt a sense of incompleteness in their identity. Yuki describes how she's self conscience about being “called out as a fake or a poser if (she) tried to associate with the South Asians” because her “dad hadn’t taught (her) about South Asian Culture”. The feeling of disconnectedness with her Bangladeshi side thus brings out a sense of “‘racial melancholia’” in Yuki (pg pg. 49). In comparison, Allison Bates similarly talked about how she “felt like (a) complete outsider” when…show more content… While Yuki lived a very economically stable and comfortable lifestyle, Allison was always bordering poverty. As we read the narratives of both women, we can see the economic standpoint affecting the topics of which each woman focuses on. For example, Yuki spent a lot of her time talking about her dating life in school, while Allison focused more on her home life. The way Yuki talked about her dating life kind of depicts the image of a pretty “normal” childhood. She didn’t have to worry about not having enough to eat, or not having place to sleep and so more of Yuki’s attention just drifted towards her social life. On the other hand, Allison had to worry about her family’s living situation on a constant basis. She had to make enough money to feed her siblings and “dreamt of living in her own home one day”(pg. 57).When Allison temporarily moved to her grandparents rich white neighborhood, on top of Allison feeling different because she was black and everyone else was white, she also thought that her and her siblings “were different because we were poor” as well (pg 59). In terms of societal stereotypes, Allison feel straight into the stereotype of black people alway being poor. This large gap in economic status, between Allison and the other people in the neighborhood made her feel even less
