DEADLINE: September 15, 2016
beigingamerica@2leafpress.org

THE BEIGING OF AMERICA: PERSONAL NARRATIVES ABOUT BEING MIXED RACE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Tara Betts
ISBN-13: 978-1-940939-54-4 (pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-940939-55-1 (eBook)
LCCN: 2016944187
2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY SERIES (Vol. 2)
Series Editor: Sean Frederick Forbes
Publication Date: June 2017

Following the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the nation’s highest office, cultural critic/scholar Hua Hsu contemplated the changing face and race of U.S. demographics vis-à-vis a piece in the January/February 2009 issue of The Atlantic.Provocatively titled, “The End of White America?”, Hsu acknowledged the “steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage” that undergirded Michael Lind’s assertions concerning the “‘beiging of America”; such “beiging” presages Hsu’s evocative contemplation of the possibilities and limitations of post-racial personhood. Notwithstanding declarations that we, as a nation, have “arrived” with regard to racial progress, Hsu nevertheless reminds readers that race – even in a post-racial imaginary – still matters.

This collection, THE BEIGING OF AMERICA: PERSONAL NARRATIVES ABOUT BEING MIXED RACE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, takes on such “race matters” and considers them through the experiences of mixed race people in the United States. Edited by Cathy Schlund-Vials and Tara Betts, who are both biracial (Schlund-Vials is Cambodian and white; Betts is African American and white), THE BEIGING OF AMERICA will feature firsthand accounts and original works by authors and artists who, to varying degrees and divergent ends, identify as “multiracial.” The editors of this collection seek contributions of 1000-1500 words; these personal essays should consider a specific event and use concrete details to think through a question or concern about race and identity. What follows are some connected questions that may be useful in thinking through the stakes of the submission:

1. What did it feel like to be the only biracial person in your neighborhood or school?
2. What are some difficulties or challenges you faced being multiracial in your family?
3. Were you ever asked the question, “What are you?” How did you answer?
4. Did you ever feel exoticized, sexualized, infantilized, or othered because of your mixed race identity?
5. Did you ever benefit from being multiracial?
6. How does race, class, gender, and education mediate your sense of multiraciality?

Those interested in submitting a piece for review and possible inclusion in the collection should email the essay and a short bio to beigingamerica@2leafpress.org by September 15, 2016. The collection is slated for a Spring 2017 publication date.

****WE’RE ONLY INTERESTED IN PERSONAL NARRATIVES****
Please don’t send us dissertations or academic essays. We’re only interested
in personal stories that everyone can read and relate to.

****THIS MEANS NO POETRY****

****REQUIREMENT: YOU MUST BE CURRENTLY LIVING IN THE U.S.****
It’s an American story about an American issue.