The multiracial community needs this book, and it seems even more important to recommend it now, given recent debates on this site. We need to shake ourselves and each other out of the current black-white paradigm that has been setting the tone of too many discussions. Men and women from a good variety of mixed backgrounds share their experiences and observations with great prose and eloquence. The only really common thread I noticed was a familiar and goofy tendancy to define home cultures according to the foods we ate as children. Here we can join the writers in considering the intersection of color and social class, the potential differences between appearance and identity, and what it is that forges our notions of racial/cultural self.

My favorite essay comes from Danzy Senna, author of the novel "Caucasia". "The Mulatto Millennium" takes a sharp and entertaining shot at the multiracial movement, herein referred to as the Mulatto Nation. It's a much needed and humorous alert to our own potential for extremism and superiority trips, so I recommend _Half & Half_ on strength of this essay alone. But the collection as a whole isn't just valuable in that socially-instructive fashion, but is capable of truly bringing up to a better understanding of ourselves and each other in a personal way. We aren't just government statistics looking for a category, and our issues are as individual as they are complex. _Half & Half_ reminds us to accept our internal differences as a movement if we want to get moving...

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