"Cecile Pineda-award-winning novelist, memoirist, theater director, performer, activist-felt rootlessness throughout much of her life. Her father was an undocumented Mexican immigrant; her mother a French-speaking immigrant from Switzerland. Pineda, born in New York City, felt culturally disconnected from both of her parents, while also ill at ease in U.S. culture. In her life, we see the strange intersection of immigrant politics, troubles with ethnic...

"They called him "pale-faced or mixed race." They called him "light, bright, almost white." But most of the time his family called him "high yella." Steve Majors was the light-skinned youngest son who stood out from the rest of his all Black family. High Yella: A Modern Family Memoir is the poignant account of how he left his family behind in search of a new identity in a world that saw him as white. Eventually he must reconcile his own search for...