Book Review for What Are You by Pearl Fuyo Gaskins

This book is set up as a collection of stories and experiences shared by biracial youth.  The backgrounds of these youth a very diversified and span across many different combinations of races.  The author, Pearl Gaskins, is the child of a Japanese-American mother and an European-American father.  She says that growing up she had several identity issues and that writing this book will help other people in her position better understand themselves and appreciate their own diversity. 

This book is perfect for any biracial person, younger or older, that is going through an identity crisis.  Because the book has writings from so many different people, most biracial readers could probably find someone with the same background as them.  There is a boy named Saladin Ali Ahmed from Dearborn, Michigan whose mother is Irish, his step mother is European-American, and his father is Arab American.  There is another girl whose mother is Puerto Rican and Portuguese and whose father is African American and Native American.  There are so many more combinations that just black and white.  Sometimes Americans can stop at just black and white combinations and not consider that in today’s age, people can and will marry whoever they want.  America’s diversity combined with the less negative stigma is producing some very exotic combinations of people.  Many of who are highlighted in this book. 

What Are You? also includes a glossary of terms.  The author seems to use her own definitions for the words as opposed to those which might be found in a dictionary or other literary work.  She gives a brief explanation of what the word or phrase means and then tells how it is used in her book.  Also included is the Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People.  This is something that I came across often on the internet but something that did not show up in any other books besides this one. 

Pearl Fuyo Gaskins writes a nice introduction and tells a little about herself before turning the book completely over to the people’s stories and experiences.  The fact that she is an insider author and seems to have some purpose in writing this book makes in incredibly authentic.  Nothing in the book seems biased and I would recommend this book to anyone who is confused, curious, or interested in biracial and multiracial identity in America.