This collection contains materials on the topic of biethnic from the DIVerse Families bibliography. Biethnic stories contain a person or relationship that is a result of a mixture between two ethnic groups. These stories will shed light on how they cohabitate and the challenges they may possibly face and how they overcome them. The challenges may come from family members or society.
These stories demonstrate how diverse cultures and ethnicities are an integral and vital part of America. Often books on this theme promote the importance of embracing differences.
Browse by Culture/Ethnicity:
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A Clear Spring
Barbara Sjoholm
While visiting relatives in Seattle, twelve-year-old Willa explores the ethnic diversity of her family and investigates the pollution of a salmon stream.
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Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
Rebecca Walker
In a memoir about the power of race to share one's personal identity, the daughter of Jewish father and African-American mother recalls her confusing but ultimately rewarding life lived between two conflicting ethnic identities. When Mel Leventhal married Alice Walker during the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, his mother declared him dead and did not reconcile until after the birth of her first grandchild.
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Children of Blood and Bone
Tomi Adeyemi
Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.
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Everything You Need to Know about Being a Biracial / Biethnic Teen
Renea D. Nash
This book for children and teenagers discusses what it means to be biracial or biethnic and what it means to find one's own identity.
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Far from the Tree
Robin Benway
Grace, adopted at birth, is raised as an only child. At sixteen she's just put her own baby up for adoption, and now is looking for her biological family. She discovers Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister who was also adopted; and Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother after seventeen years in the foster care system. Grace struggles between cautious joy at having found them, and the true meaning of family in all its forms.
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Little & Lion
Brandy Colbert
Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her [stepbrother] Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons.
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The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
James McBride
Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful memoir.
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The Home for Unwanted Girls
Joanna Goodman
In 1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious civility--much like Maggie Hughes' parents. Maggie's English-speaking father has ambitions for his daughter that don't include marriage to the poor French boy the next farm over. But Maggie's heart is captured by Gabriel Phénix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents send the baby Elodie to an orphanage where she receives horrible treatment. Seventeen years later, Maggie, married to a businessman eager to start a family, cannot forget the daughter she was forced to abandon, and a chance reconnection with Gabriel spurs a wrenching choice. As time passes, the stories of Maggie and Elodie intertwine but never touch, until Maggie realizes she must take what she wants from life and go in search of her long-lost daughter, finally reclaiming the truth that has been denied them both.
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The Land
Mildred D. Taylor
After the Civil War, Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.
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The Night Diary
Veera Hiranandani
It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders. Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.
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War of the Eagles
Eric Walters
During World War II near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Jed comes to better understand and take pride in his British and native Tsimshian ancestry through caring for an injured eagle at a military fort and losing his Japanese Canadian best friend to an internment camp.
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What are You?: Voices of Mixed-Race Young People
Pearl Fuyo Gaskins
Many young people of racially mixed backgrounds discuss their feelings about family relationships, prejudice, dating, personal identity, and other issues.
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Zack
William Bell
The son of a Jewish father and black mother, high school senior Zack has never been allowed to meet his mother's family, but after doing a research project on a former slave, he travels from his home in Canada to Natchez, Mississippi to find his grandfather.
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Zayde Comes to Live
Sheri Sinykin
When Rachel's beloved grandfather, Zayde, comes to spend his last days with her family, she worries what will happen when he dies, especially after friends tell her the Christian and Muslim beliefs about the afterlife.