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Acknowledgments One of my most vivid memories from elementary school occurred in some fourth grade festivities. Toward the end of the game “Red Rover,” instead of calling out individual students’ names, the teacher began calling students by various descriptors. As one of the last members of our team, I was excited when I heard “Red Rover, Red Rover, send everyone Italian right over.” I ran and broke through two students holding hands but was promptly chastised by another teacher for running out of turn. Through tears, I explained that my mother was Italian (my childhood simplification of her ethnicity), but the teacher shook her head “no” at me. In a small way, this memory highlights some of the critical questions I approach in this book. First, how do blackness and mixed race get defined? The United States has a complicated and inconsistent history with regard to racial categorization. The fact that, at least for some time, I could be nothing other than black to this teacher points to a second, related issue I take up in this project: the political and social will in America to define blackness as something static, set, and monolithic. This project considers a mixed-race identity that does not align with the practice of denying a black presence when it is not advantageous, while at the same time it challenges racial categories in the first place. There is a box in my parents’ basement filled with nearly every paper I ever wrote in high school and college. A quick survey of them reveals a preoccupation with identity, ancestry, and race: an embarrassingly clichéd poem titled “colors”; an article I wrote for my college newsletter titled “Black, White or Other?”; a cringe-worthy undergraduate freshman seminar paper, “Growing Up with Okra and Oregano”; and so on. As a young person, I struggled with expressing what seemed then like competing loyalties. I was thinking about some of the ideas in this project long before I knew what I wanted to say. I would like to thank teachers, motivators, and mentors who, perhaps unbeknownst to them, encouraged my individuality and stirred my imagination , curiosity, and critical thinking from an early age onward—in particular, Dee Appleman, Wendy Geohegan, Jessica Sinclair, Charles Shaw, David and Acknowledgments x Connie Robinson, Judy Gebre-Hewitt, Leon Forrest, Charles M. Payne, and Madhu Dubey. I am grateful for my extraordinary graduate professors and dissertation committee members, including Kwaku Korang, Zine Magubane, Ramona Curry, and William Maxwell. I am particularly indebted to my dissertation advisor, Robert Dale Parker, who continues to inspire me to be a better teacher and scholar. His classes, thoughtful comments, and sage advice have been invaluable. This project received support from many sources and individuals. I would especially like to thank my colleague-friends: Marina Bachetti, Clevis Headley, Derek White, Jane Caputi, Andy Furman, Elena Machado Saez, Raphael Dalleo, Papatya Bucak, Eric Berlatsky, Taylor Hagood, and Patricia Saunders. It was a pleasure to work with the staff at the University of Tennessee Press. Thank you to my editor, Kerry Webb, for her steady encouragement and support from the beginning. I am so happy and appreciative that my new friend, artist Agnès Poitevin-Navarre, has graciously allowed me to use her compelling work for the cover. Deepest gratitude goes to my mother, Frances Dagbovie, who generously read, edited, and offered suggestions and insights to each draft of every chapter. Friends and family have provided advice, encouragement, and affirmation .Specialthanksgotomysister(chica)andkindredspirit,SummerJoyPoole, and my closest friends whose conversations, support, and love have sustained me through the years: Pascale Burns, Miyoshi Brown, Annie Campbell, Liza Colimon, Charifa Smith, and Nghana Lewis. Whenever my brother or I had any kind of academic success, my father would reminisce and remind us that our Togolese grandfather would be beaming . We both knew the story well: Our grandfather would tell our father, then attending college in the States, “I don’t know what they teach you at those universities but keep learning!” I hope I have made my grandparents (Peter Gaglo Dagbovie, Félicia Nuagnon Dagbovie, Charles Formosa, and Ruth Formosa) proud. This book is dedicated to my immediate family: my beloved and deeply missed sister-in-law, TShaka, who was always one of my biggest cheerleaders; my incredible and loving nephews, Perovi, Kokou, and Agbelé; my brother, Pero, who has always been my role model, best friend, and champion; my mother and confidant, Frances, whose love of books transferred to me and whose...

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