A Mixed race

the long version

"Entering one of the most topical and energetic debates of our time, this collection of new essays addresses the issue of ethnicity, focusing on colonial America, a period which has been previously overlooked in recent scholarship about the formation of American culture. The essays [in this book] suggest that American culture has arisen out of an unusually rich and interactive ethnic mix--inescapably multicultural from its very beginnings-- and that this representation of cultural differences has fundamentally defined American culture. They argue that a culture shaped by responses to ethnic and racial difference is not merely a modern circumstance but one at the base of American history"--Back cover.