Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiahs [Hardcover]

This is the first book to place the self-fashioning of mixed-race individuals in the context of a Black Atlantic. Drawing on a wide range of sources and a diverse cast of characters  from the diaries, letters, novels and plays of femme fatales in Congo and the United States to the advertisements, dissertations, oral histories and political speeches of Black Power activists in Canada and the United Kingdom  it gives particular attention to the construction of mixed-race femininity and masculinity during the twentieth century. Its broad scope and historical approach provides readers with a timely rejoinder to academics, artists, journalists and politicians who only use the mixed-race label to depict prophets or delinquents as new national icons for the twenty-first century.

1. New People?  2. An Individualistic Age?  3. Je suis m?tisse   4. I. Am. A Light Grey Canadian.  5. Im Black. Not Mixed. Not Canadian. Not African. Just Black  6. Yes, Were All Individuals! Im Not.  Conclusion

Within the burgeoning mixed race studies field, the importance of socio-historical and geographical approaches to understanding racial mixing and mixedness have not always been foregrounded. McNeil excellently address this imbalance, highlighting both the specifics  as well as the commonalities  in the ways in which conceptualisations of the crossing of racial boundaries in the UK, USA and Canada are constructed and perceived. Drawing on a fascinating and eclectic range of literary, television and film resources alongside first-hand interviews with mixed race individuals, Sex and Race in the Black Atlantictakes a fresh and challenging look at what it means to be  and be seen to be  mixing or of mixed race in an Anglo-North American context. Distinctive in its subject matter and tone, McNeils book is a fantastic contribution to the existing literatul“*