Washoe County Library System

An African American man describes life as the son of a white mother and black father, reflecting on his mother's contributions to his life and his confusion over his own identity.

"A sixteen-year-old biracial girl in rural Oregon in the 1920s searches for the truth about her father's death while avoiding trouble from the Ku Klux Klan in this YA historical novel inspired by Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'"--

Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man. Light in August is the story of Lena Grove's search for the father of her unborn child, and features one of Faulkner's most memorable characters: Joe Christmas, a desperate drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.

Two months before he died of cancer, renowned literary critic Anatole Broyard called his grown son and daughter to his side, to reveal a secret he had kept all their lives and most of his own: he was black. His daughter Bliss learned that her WASPy, privileged Connecticut childhood had come at a price. Ever since his own parents, New Orleans Creoles, had moved to Brooklyn and began to "pass" in order to get work, Anatole had learned to conceal his...

Biracial twin sisters--one who presents as black and the other as white--are determined to put the ghosts of the past to rest and to uncover the truth behind their parents' murders in the Jim Crow South.