New Yorker (now) Claudine C. O’Hearn was born in Hong Kong of mixed parentage, a Chinese mother, and an Irish American father, relays her own story to open the book and poses some thought provoking questions and observations to frame things.

Much like my own daughter she found she could pass as numerous nationalities Hawaiian, Italian or even Russian (Egyptian, American, Spanish, Mexican and Arab for our family), then proceeds to document with an easy to read style, first-person accounts of 17 other people with a mixed-race and/or mixed-culture heritage, who grew up in the United States or were immigrants. The multicultural variations are numerous, complex, and varied from a woman with a Chinese American father and a Jamaican-American mother, to a man with a white English father and a black Jamaican mother. A lady with a father from Bombay and mother from Brooklyn, are just some examples of the mixed-race contributors. Others do not have a mixed-race background but write their experiences as newcomers in a strange and varied land. A Hindu from Calcutta and the experience of schooling in America (which can be tough on anyone really). A Southern Vietnamese girl who escaped by boat with her parents and sister and grew up in Southern California.

Due to its short engaging story nature this is an easy bedside book for the times you want to read, but not so you wake up with a book on your face at 2 in the morning. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and continue to do on occasion.