As someone who is Japanese and Greek, I’m thrilled that multiracial representation is appearing more frequently in teen literature. However, there is room for improvement. Yes, authors should include multiracial characters, who, after all, represent the United States’ fastest growing demographic. But far too often these individuals are reduced to simply being gorgeous, described in ways that make it clear that the authors believe their exceptional good looks are the obvious, inevitable outcome of being multiracial. This inaccurate stereotype is deeply harmful. Texts that emphasize how “unusual” the character’s features are echo the rise of exploitative, exoticizing social media content fixating on interracial couples and their children. Sometimes multiracial characters are simplistically framed as pitiable, confused victims of an intolerant world, reducing to one dimension the full, rich, complex, ever shifting multiracial journey.
The following 2022 releases offer multidimensional, well-realized portraits that delve into the complexities of, for example, having an identity that even sympathetic, loving parents may not share and have not lived through, or of having a full biological sibling who looks racially different enough that the contrast shapes how you each move through the world. They explore the experience of having a deep personal connection to a culture you may not “look like” you belong to. They celebrate the emotional growth and insights that emerge from reckoning with questions of identity that others can ignore.
Man o’ War by Cory McCarthy (Dutton, May 31): River McIntyre is exploring not just their sexuality and gender identity, but also what it means to be an almost-White–passing Irish and Lebanese American teen in the Midwest raised by a well-intentioned mother carrying the scars of anti-Arab prejudice who only wants to protect her own child from others’ intolerance.
This Place Is Still Beautiful by XiXi Tian (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, June 7): Margaret and Annalie Flanagan are Chinese and Irish American sisters from small-town Illinois. One girl looks more Asian, and one reads White; one is an outspoken activist, and one prefers to blend in; each wrestles with how to respond to an act of overt racism while negotiating delicate family bonds.
Azar on Fire by Olivia Abtahi (Nancy Paulsen Books, Aug. 23): Italian on her dad’s side and Argentine and Iranian on her mom’s, Azar Rossi’s musical ambitions are affected by the vocal fold nodules that limit her speech. She’s surrounded by her boisterous, food-loving extended family, and her Northern Virginia high school is naturally and delightfully diverse across many dimensions.
The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, Sept. 6): This novel uses the horror genre to explore the emotionally devastating toll that racism takes by following White-passing teen Maddy as well as the Black classmates she has not been able to have honest relationships with—and who have struggled with their own senses of self due to the community’s racism.
Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win by Susan Azim Boyer (Wednesday Books, Nov. 1): Jasmine looks more like her Iranian immigrant father; her brother more closely resembles their Irish American mother. But he’s the one who’s learned Farsi and is more outspoken about their Persian heritage—a sticky point as the 1979 Iran hostage crisis unfolds and Jasmine’s run for senior class president (and own identity) come under scrutiny.
We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds (Roaring Brook Press, Nov. 29): Suddenly moving from Washington, D.C., to rural Georgia is a huge adjustment for Avery, her White dad, and Black mom—one that brings a reckoning with the role race has played in new and long-standing friendships alike, painful family history and fraught relationships, and community secrets simmering beneath the surface.
Laura Simeon is a young readers' editor.
