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Not quite not white : losing and finding race in America / Sharmila Sen

Author
Sen, Sharmila
Published
New York, New York : Penguin Books, [2018]
Copyright Date
©2018
Physical Description
xxvii, 191 pages ; 20 cm

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Contents
The mask that grins -- Enter the dragon -- The first remove -- The autobiography of an ex-Indian woman -- Heart of not whiteness.
Summary
At the age of 12, Sharmila Sen emigrated from India to the U.S. The year was 1982, and everywhere she turned, she was asked to self-report her race: on INS forms, at the doctor's office, in middle school. Never identifying with a race in the India of her childhood, she rejects her new "not quite" designation: not quite white, not quite black, not quite Asian, and spends much of her life attempting to blend into American whiteness. But after her teen years trying to assimilate, watching shows like General Hospital and The Jeffersons, dancing to Duran Duran and Prince, and perfecting the art of Jell-O no-bake desserts, she is forced to reckon with the hard questions: What does it mean to be white, why does whiteness retain the magic cloak of invisibility while other colors are made hypervisible, and how much does whiteness figure into Americanness?
Subject(s)
Genre(s)
ISBN
9780143131380 (paperback)
0143131389 (paperback)
Source of Acquisition
Purchased with funds from the Paterno Libraries Endowment (Campus College Libraries) ; 2018
Awards
Asian/Pacific American Award for Adult Non-Fiction, 2019.
Endowment Note
Paterno Libraries Endowment (Campus College Libraries)
View MARC record | catkey: 26509808