Joan Steinau Lester

Identity Crisis. As a biracial teen, Nina is accustomed to a life of varied hues-mocha-colored skin, ringed brown hair streaked with red, a darker brother, a black father, a white mother. When her parents decide to divorce, the rainbow of Nina's existence is reduced to a much starker reality. Shifting definitions and relationships are playing out all around her, and new boxes and lines seem to be getting drawn every day. Between the fractures within...

A stunning tale about the deeply entrenched conflicts between a white mother and her biracial daughter. Mama' s Child is story of an idealistic young white woman who travelled to the American South as a civil rights worker, fell in love with an African American man, and started a family in San Francisco, where the more liberal city embraced them-- except when it didn't. They raise a son and daughter, but the tensions surrounding them have a negative...