MIXED

A mother reflects on the intersection of American history and her biracial family in this work that blends a memoir with social commentary.

As a White mother to biracial children and a stepmother to a Black son, Jones is deeply aware of the cultural inequalities in the United States. In this book, she uses her family’s experiences to explore racial issues in contemporary America. Her husband, Keith, nicknamed “End Zone,” is a retired professional football star. To fans of the University of Nebraska football team, he was a “true Husker legend,” but off the field, he remained “constantly on guard while taking a walk in his own neighborhood” in Omaha and frequently got “stared down by strangers” as a Black man who drove a nice car. As readers “Meet the Joneses,” they are introduced to the author’s son, Quincy, who attended college with “the most active white nationalist in the Nebraska area.” Despite the student’s vile record of racist tweets and videos posted on social media, the school declined disciplinary action, prompting Quincy to transfer. The Jones family also includes Ezley and Xonya, twins with drastically different skin tones, hair textures, and eye colors, who confronted questions of identity and ethnicity from an early age. “Do you know where they carry the blue-eyed doll with a blonde afro,” Jones rhetorically asks as she recalls her difficulty finding a doll that looked like Xonya. With a degree in criminal justice, the author effectively places her family’s poignant stories within a wider context of race in U.S. society. There are ample statistics relating to police brutality, mass incarceration, and educational disparities that provide readers a wide-angled lens on race in America that complements the Jones family’s personal anecdotes. The author is also introspective in the ways that she benefited from White privilege and offers well-intentioned White readers ideas on how to address their own unconscious biases. Despite the book’s many strengths, some readers may be skeptical of its optimistic take that America is at the “tipping point” of becoming the equitable nation “that many have been…waiting for.”

A well-researched, timely, and deeply personal analysis of race in contemporary America.