BOOK LIST:

Interracial Relationships

Updated: February 8, 2022

In contemporary America, particularly among the younger generation, there is an almost nonchalant acceptance of interracial friendships, marriages and romances.  This was not the case throughout much of this country’s history. Interracial marriage was first outlawed by the colony of Maryland in 1664, and remained illegal in the state of Alabama up until 2000, the same year when a policy forbidding students from dating interracially was dropped by a prominent Christian university. Legal restrictions notwithstanding, individuals of various races have fallen in love with one another and have courageously formed relationships, enduring unspeakable violence and cruelty at the hands family members and strangers, not just law enforcement officers.  The following titles depict both friendships and romantic relationships from the pre-Civil War era through the 20th century and up to the present day.


Book cover for Boy21
Boy21
Quick, Matthew, 1973-
Call Number: YA

As the only white player on his high school basketball team, Finley doesn’t understand why his coach insists that he befriend Russell, a troubled black superstar who has just moved to their town outside Philadelphia.  Finley lives in a violent neighborhood controlled by the Irish mob.  Though Russell comes from a privileged existence on the West Coast, ever since his parents were murdered, he can barely function.


Book cover for Bridge of scarlet leaves
Bridge of scarlet leaves
McMorris, Kristina.
To forestall his father’s plans to arrange a traditional Japanese marriage, Lane Morimoto elopes with Maddie, the young white woman he loves.  When Pearl Harbor is bombed a day later, the newlyweds decide to return to their respective family's homes in San Pedro, CA without disclosing that they married.  They are soon forced further apart when Executive Order 9066 is issued, forcing Lane and his family into distant internment camps.
 

Book cover for Calling Me Home
Calling Me Home
Kibler, Julie
Without a word of explanation, 89-year-old Isabelle asks her hairdresser, Dorrie, to drive her from Arlington, Texas to Cincinnati, Ohio to attend a funeral.  Dorrie agrees to this outlandish request because it will provide her with much needed time apart from her teenage son and the new man in her life.  Isabelle is white and Dorrie is black, but this is not Isabelle’s first interracial interaction.
 

Book cover for Daughter of fortune : a novel
Daughter of fortune : a novel
Allende, Isabel.

Pregnant and abandoned in Chile by her lover who is lured by the California gold rush, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Sommers heads to San Francisco herself.  Disguised as a boy, she spends four years searching for the man she thought she loved, all the while being guided and cared for by Tao Chi-en, a Chinese healer.This is a sweeping historical novel that follows the adventures of its heroine from her childhood in Chile to the gold fields of California as she searches for her first love.

 


Book cover for Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
Margolick, David
Call Number: 371.974 M329

With the goal of becoming a lawyer, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was selected as one of nine black students to integrate the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957.  On the first day of classes the eight other students were advised to arrive at school as a group escorted by local ministers, but without a telephone Elizabeth never received word about this plan.  As she stoically approached the campus by herself, she was mobbed by adult segregationists who hurled the most hateful and violent racial epithets at her.  An iconic photograph captured white student Hazel Bryan, also fifteen, spewing venom at Elizabeth.  Years later Hazel contacted Elizabeth to apologize, and for a time, the two women formed a friendship.


Book cover for If a tree falls at lunch period
If a tree falls at lunch period
Choldenko, Gennifer, 1957-
Call Number: x
There is a new African-American student at Kirsten and Rory’s all-white private school.  He’s tall, nice looking and well dressed.  And it turns out that he is related to one of the two girls.  This children’s fiction title addresses the issue of marital conflict in addition to interracial relationships.
 

Book cover for A Life Apart: A Novel
A Life Apart: A Novel
Marlow, L. Y. (Lydia Y.)

Just as his strength is about to give out, Morris, a young U.S. Navy enlistee, is pulled out of the waters of Pearl Harbor by a sailor who later perishes from one of the relentless Japanese Imperial Army torpedo attacks.  When Morris returns home to Boston, he calls upon his rescuer's sister, Beatrice, to pay his respects.  The comfort they offer each other is a godsend, while the sexual attraction they feel is as compelling as it is forbidden.  Beatrice is black and Morris is white, and during the early 1940s Beatrice’s friends and relatives believe that nothing but trouble will come from this liaison. Morris tells no one about Beatrice because he is married and has a young baby that he has yet to get to know.


Book cover for Mixed Korean: Our Stories
Mixed Korean: Our Stories
Call Number: 920.0519 M6855

A collection of stories, poems, prose, memoirs and scholarly articles by adults who are the children of mixed race relationships. They are part Korean, but their experiences, thoughts, feelings and reflections could be those of anyone whose heritage is the result of a major conflct or war. Each story is unique and a testament to courage, endurance and truth.


Book cover for The Necessary Hunger: A Novel
The Necessary Hunger: A Novel
Revoyr, Nina

When Raina’s African-American mother and Nancy’s Japanese-American father fall in love and move in together, the grown-ups’ peers object to the relationship. The daughters, on the other hand, are highly competitive basketball players totally immersed in the rivalry between their South Central Los Angeles high schools.  And Nancy quietly grapples with her one-sided attraction to Raina.


Book cover for The President's Daughter
The President's Daughter
Chase-Riboud, Barbara

At the age of 21, Harriet Heming leaves behind her Monticello home and her life as a slave. With her fair skin and red hair, she is able to pass as a white woman, but without being granted emancipation by her father, Thomas Jefferson, she must guard this secret for the rest of her life because of the laws of slavery and miscegenation. This is a sequel to Chase-Riboud’s landmark novel, Sally Hemings, which documents the relationship between President Jefferson and his slave mistress.


Book cover for The Time of Our Singing
The Time of Our Singing
Powers, Richard

In 1939 with the reluctant blessing of her Philadelphia Negro family, classical singer Delia Daley marries David Strom, a German Jewish émigré, who teaches physics at Columbia University. Delia masterfully transmits her musical gifts to their three children, but the seething racial hatred of the era constricts and jeopardizes their lives to such a degree that the family’s Jewishness becomes totally eclipsed.


Book cover for The Time of Our Singing
The Time of Our Singing
Powers, Richard

In 1939 with the reluctant blessing of her Philadelphia Negro family, classical singer Delia Daley marries David Strom, a German Jewish émigré, who teaches physics at Columbia University. Delia masterfully transmits her musical gifts to their three children, but the seething racial hatred of the era constricts and jeopardizes their lives to such a degree that the family’s Jewishness becomes totally eclipsed.


Book cover for An Unconditional Freedom
An Unconditional Freedom
Cole, Alyssa

Daniel Cumberland was a free Black man studying law in Massachusetts when he was kidnapped and sold as a slave in the South. Unable to settle into his old life after a friend buys his freedom, he becomes a Loyal League operative, fighting undercover. Janeta Sanchez is a proud Cubana living with her father in Florida until he is arrested, and she believes that she can secure his release by gathering information for the Confederacy from the Loyal League. This unlikely pair is forced to work as a team, and their prickly relationship is complicated by their growing attraction to each other.

 

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