Mixed Race Hollywood [Hardcover]

A Kansas City Star 2008 Notable Book

Since the early days of Hollywood film, portrayals of interracial romance and of individuals of mixed racial and ethnic heritage have served to highlight and challenge fault lines within Hollywood and the nation’s racial categories and borders.Mixed Race Hollywoodis a pioneering compilation of essays on mixed-race romance, individuals, families, and stars in U.S. film and media culture.

Situated at the cutting-edge juncture of ethnic studies and media studies, this collection addresses early mixed-race film characters, Blaxploitation, mixed race in children’s television programming, and the outing of mixed-race stars on the Internet, among other issues and contemporary trends in mixed-race representation. The contributors explore this history and current trends from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to better understand the evolving conception of race and ethnicity in contemporary culture.

"An accomplished, well-researched view of race identity in cinema."
-M/C Reviews

“An interrogation of pop cultures representations of multi-racial characters and interracial relationships.”
-Colorlines

"An immensely readable interrogation of contemporary representations of multi-racial characters and inter-racial relationships in film, television, and popular culture."
-ColorLines

"A significant step forward in the study of race and media. There are very few academic collections that match this one in timeliness, depth and readability.Mixed Race Hollywoodreflects both a theoretical turn in critical race studies and the new representational habits of a culture in which celebrities wear their multiracial status as a badge of pride and sign of demographic pull."
-Diane Negra,University of East Anglia

"Each essay stands as an exciting contribution to an openl#4