mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

[This is a revision of a review I first posted to 50books_poc on April 11th, 2011. It has been edited for clarity.]

Shirlee Taylor Haizlip's family has been racially diverse almost as far back as her genealogy can be traced. In her family tree one can find free and enslaved Black Americans, American Indians, Irish immigrants, and Martha Washington.

It was on her mother's side of the family that something happened which is probably more common than most people know. Her mother's father took his light-skinned daughters, and they became "white", while their slightly darker-skinned sister (Haizlip's mother) was put into foster care and remained "black".

A good part of the book is about Haizlip's search for her mother's family and the course of her genealogical research. She tells the fascinating stories, pieced together from records and passed-down memories, of several generations of her relatives, and their experiences as multiracial Americans in different times and places. And when she finally meets the "passing" relatives she never knew, she has to confront the realization that they're not Black people passing as white—they are white. This brings home the permeable boundaries of our socially constructed racial divisions in a deeply personal way.

It's also a book about the complexities of navigating life when other people are intensely, even frighteningly invested in the categories and can't fit you into one. Some of Haizlip's ancestors were listed as one race on one census form, and a different race on another (without asking them what they preferred, of course, or questioning whether the available options even made sense). Haizlip identifies as Black, but is sometimes read as white, and she always has to wonder whether she and her darker-skinned husband will be read as a Black couple or an interracial couple, in a world where being read as the latter may put them in physical danger.

As a trans person, I found this highly relatable. The gender you're read as isn't just about how people treat you as an individual, but also about whether they see you and your partner as gay or straight (it's always one or the other), and how they perceive your intentions when approaching a stranger or interacting with a child. Whenever someone tries to categorize you, they're trying to slot you into a whole web of presumed social roles, and you have to decide on the fly whether it's desirable or safe to correct their misconceptions, even when you don't endorse the worldview that underpins them.

Haizlip does not have cut-and-dried answers about race and passing, because there aren't any. What she has are stories, her family's stories. The range of experiences is both eye-opening and familiar; it's not only a historical issue, but very much a contemporary one. People need to understand that not everyone is easy to categorize at a glance, and what it means for our social and emotional lives when someone else does the categorizing for us.