#delacorte press

By Natasha Díaz

As a white-presenting, multiracial Jewish woman, I looked like most of the protagonists in the books that I read growing up (aka white girls), but I never related to them. I didn’t understand why all the characters somehow came from families that seemed exactly the same. These casually all-white, anglo universes weren’t a part of my reality, and as much as I appeared as though I should, I did not I see myself mirrored in the pages.

When I got a little older, I realized that if I searched, there were books that featured mixed-race and Jewish characters. If it was a Jewish narrative, the book was almost always about the Holocaust. In the stories I found with characters of mixed race, more often than not, biracial and multiracial narratives focused on their external appearance and exoticized the character’s “European features” praising “light eyes” or “silky hair” or “thin noses,” reinforcing the sentiment that the lack of visual connection to their Black or Brown heritage made them special or more beautiful and desirable. The stories rarely delved into the internal struggle so many people of mixed heritage experience with feelings of unworthiness to themselves and their histories. Biracial and multiracial characters were written as victims of their “light-skinned plight,” often bullied by darker-skinned people in their families and communities. (I should pause here to state for the record that not all mixed or biracial or multiracial people have a white parent, and not all people with mixed racial and ethnic heritage, even those who do have a white parent, look white or are light-skinned. There are many mixed people who present as Black and Brown and are subject to the same prejudices that monoracial people of color experience.) But it seemed as though all mixed people were being portrayed in one way. And as readers, we were asked to pity and empathize with the hardship of not fitting in as a result of a lighter skin tone without ever acknowledging the negative impact that perpetuating these colorist ideas has on communities of color.

When I decided to finally write the book that would eventually become Color Me In, I promised myself that I would create a world on the page that my younger self needed. One that looked and sounded the way mine did when I woke up every day, filled with a blend of races and communities that didn’t shy away from the uniquely complicated experience of being multiracial and white-passing, as well as Jewish in ethnicity without much connection to Judaism as a religion. I wanted to write a character who learns not only to take pride in her various cultures but also to take responsibility and accountability for her privileges as she tries desperately to make herself feel whole. I wanted to write something messy, the way the world is, especially when you move through it as a gray area personified.

I wrote Color Me In because I want young people to know they have a right to take ownership of their identities, and that when they do so, it is important to recognize where they fit within the cycles of systemic injustice that plague our country. I wrote Color Me In because I want young people to find strength in their unique backgrounds and experiences and to use that power to rise up and be loud in the fight for equality because we need them now more than ever.

Natasha Díaz is a freelance writer and producer. As a screenwriter, Natasha has been a quarterfinalist in the Austin Film Festival and a finalist for both the NALIP Diverse Women in Media Fellowship and the Sundance Episodic Story Lab. Her personal essays have been published in the Establishment and the Huffington Post.Color Me In is her debut young adult novel. Originally from New York City, Natasha now lives in Oakland, California.

natashaerikadiaz.com @TashiDiaz on Twitter @NatashaErikaDiaz on Instagram and Facebook.