Preface. From Biracial to Multiracial to Mixed-Race to Critical Mixed-Race Studies  ix

Introduction. Reading Mixed-Race African American Representations in the New Millennium  1

Part I: The New Millennium Mulatta  

1. Televising the Bad Race Girl: Jennifer Beals on The L Word, the Race Card, and the Punishment of Mixed-Race Blackness  37

2. The Sad Race Girl: Passing and the New Millennium Mulatta in Danzy Senna's Caucasia  67

Part II: The Exceptional Multiracial  

3. Transitioning to the Exceptional Multiracial: Escaping Tragedy through Black Transcendence in Mixing Nia  95

4. Recursive Racial Transformation: Selling the Exceptional Multiracial on America's Next Top Model  125

Conclusion. Racist Jokes and the Exceptional Multiracial, or Why Transcending Blackness Is a Terrible Proposition  155

Notes  173

Bibliography  201

Index  219

“Joseph’s primary contribution lies in focusing on how the celebration of mixed race usually perpetuates negative attitudes toward blackness, and how central gender is to performance of raced identity.”—G. Jay, Choice

“Joseph’s primary contribution lies in focusing on how the celebration of mixed race usually perpetuates negative attitudes toward blackness, and how central gender is to performance of raced identity.”—G. Jay, Choice

"Transcending Blackness is unique in the field of multiracial studies and a truly groundbreaking and brilliant book. It is also a pleasure to read. Ralina L. Joseph is a rigorous interdisciplinarian, well versed in a number of fields, and she meticulously analyzes and cites these literatures throughout this important work."—Imani Perry, author of More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States

"Transcending Blackness will make a great contribution to the literature on race, gender, and popular culture. Through close readings of diverse works in genres such as television, literature, film, and news media, Ralina L. Joseph explores how the ways that multiracial African Americans imagine themselves and are imagined by others have evolved, highlighting the significance of postracial and postfeminist discourses in this transformation."—E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity

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