Mixed-Race Identity in the American South

The chief value of this book may end up arising not from the thesis Sattler compellingly articulates in regard to what she calls the “memoir of the search” but from the ways in which her ideas stimulate subsequent scholars to expand and develop the growing interdisciplinary field of mixed-race studies. Michele Elam’s landmark study The Souls of Mixed Folk is, as it should be, a foundational part of this volume's methodology, but Sattler also deftly extends Elam’s work by looking very precisely at a set of four exemplary memoirs about researching previously obscured racial heritage. She contends that the "memoir of the search" itself performs an act of literary passing; although it seemingly opens new paths for understanding and writing about mixed-race identity at the individual and familial levels, it also reinforces—consciously or unconsciously—a wider narrative of national identity that still privileges whiteness…. Sattler's reframing of the critical discussion of mixed-race life-writing is thorough, valuable, and timely. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

* Choice Reviews *

Julia Sattler’s thoughtful and well-researched analysis shows how a prominent and under-studied genre configured Black, white, and multi-racial identities—as well as the relationships among them—in very recent history. This timely study will prove immensely helpful to readers interested in race and writing in the contemporary United States.

-- Leigh Anne Duck, University of Mississippi

Julia Sattler’s book makes an important intervention into ongoing debates—within and beyond literary studies—about US racial classification. Sattler argues persuasively that recent ‘memoirs of the search’ into mixed-racial ancestry constitute a distinctive new genre, even as they adopt and adapt familiar ways of narrating race and family.

-- Martyn