Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity

Names We Call Homeis a ground-breaking collection of essays which articulate the dynamics of racial identity in contemporary society. The first volume of its kind,Names We Call Homeoffers autobiographical essays, poetry, and interviews to highlight the historical, social, and cultural influences that inform racial identity and make possible resistance to myriad forms of injustice. The multiracial, multiethnic volume showcases a group of twenty-six distinguished and visionary artists, educators and activists from the United States, England, Brazil, the Caribbean and India. Writing across gender, religion, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity and age, the contributors proceed from the common desire to know how racial identity is shaped by other identities, history, activism and geography. Each contribution speaks to the range of multidimensional struggles that have required new names and new homes--psychically, emotionally, politically as well asgeographically. The contributors toNames We Call Homeanalyze how and why they define themselves radically; what they were taught about race as children and teenagers; how various social movements have shaped their intellectual work and activism; and what keeps them going in conservative times. In attempting to account for the ways contributors define "home," the volume touches on many themes--how family, community and social movements shape racial identity formation; how people make sense of their individual and collective lives; the relationship between love and racial identity; and how risk and vulnerability shape the contours of racial consciousness. Insistently treating biography and theory as inseparable and synergistic, the writers speculate on what a future might look like when identity is not predicated on denial, dismissal or insurmountable difference. The many topics covered in the volume theorize fundamental aspects of racial experience; border politics andliving; the legacy of post colonialism; internal colonization; Jewish identity; politics in interracial relationships; lesbian and gay identity; the politics of memory; the costs of acculturation; childhood trauma; biracial identity; the effects of class on identity development; the limits of unidimensional political alliances; and racial identity in the global diaspora. By identifying these issues as central to racial identity formation,Names We Call Homeadvances race theory in concrete, meaningful ways and spotlights the power and heroism in individual lives and memories.