Mixed Roots

29 personal essays exploring mixed identity, belonging, family, racism, community and the paradoxical ways of being in the world

Mixed people carry lifelong embodied knowledge about existing in non-binary, intersectional worlds. Mixed Roots presents 29 personal essays that complicate the narrative around race and identity—dispelling narrow ideas that there is ever one “right” or singular way for folks to identify.

Born out of a community of writers formed through editor Anne Liu Kellor’s annual writing workshop, Mixed Roots is filled with pieces infused with a deep examination of privilege, microaggressions, whiteness, ancestral trauma, internalized racism, and paradoxical truths—going beyond common tropes found in many mixed-race narratives. Highlighting various Asian, Black, Native, Latine, and Arab mixed voices from writers ranging from their 20s to 70s, Mixed Roots invites more multiracial and mixed roots people in to actively contribute to the dialogue around race, whether or not they publicly identify as “mixed.”

A powerful collection of personal truths and cultural insight, Mixed Roots reveals how community and narrative can be useful tools to see how alike we are. We all carry in our bodies the historical legacies, confusion, trauma, and harm caused by racialized experiences—Mixed Roots says we are multilayered, not easily defined or contained by one story, and as such, can speak to us all.“Each writer within this anthology boldly charts their own path to belonging. But the true magic forms in the broader chorus, where voices who have never felt a ‘we’ write themselves into collective lineage. Refusing to be defined by categories that have never encompassed the complexity of who we are, Mixed Roots anchors itself in both history and gratitude for the ones whose stories paved the way for us, while opening new paths of possibility for the ones who will follow. This anthology is a gift for anyone who lives within the both/and.”
—Tessa Hulls, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and artist of Feeding GhostsAnne Liu Kellor is a mixed-race Chinese American writer, editor, and teacher based in Seattle. Her memoir, Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging, was a 2021 IPPY Winner and Washington State Book Award finalist. Kellor's essays have appeared in publications such as Memoir Land, Longreads, New England Review, Fourth Genre, and YES! Magazine. She loves supporting other writers through her work as a facilitator of online creative nonfiction classes, workshops for multiracial people, and a yearlong nonfiction manuscript program for women and non-binary writers. You can learn more at: www.anneliukellor.com