Essay Collection in Review: Half and Half

Summary: An interesting subject but a very average collection.

I wanted to love this collection, but my actual feelings are closer to ‘eh, it was alright.’. I liked that it included an incredible array of perspectives. It was interested to see the wide variety of ways people come by a bicultural and/or biracial identity. Of course, your parents might simply bequeath you two different cultures or racial identities, but so might your grandparents. Other contributors to this collection were adopted or had moved all over the world while growing up. Their perspectives on their identities and how other people respond to them varied just as widely. Unfortunately, this was a case where the form didn’t live up to the content for me.

All of these essays were decent, but none really stood out. Many included similar themes, such as feelings of not belonging. There were several cultural references that made this feel quite dated. I’m not sure either of these is the reason the whole collection felt kind of bland and boring to me. I feel bad giving a book a middling review without being better able to identify what kept it from being a favorite. I’m not sure there was a universal problem though. Each essay was its own thing and I think I failed to fall in love with each one for its own unique reasons.

The post Essay Collection in Review: Half and Half appeared first on Doing Dewey.