Lisa Williamson Rosenberg--Mirror Me

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Our guest today, Lisa Williamson Rosenberg, has a fascinating story to share. She is biracial, a former ballet dancer, and a psychotherapist. All of these identies inform her fiction in complex ways. Reds, meet Lisa!

Navigating the Tragic Mulatto Tripwire:

How My Biracial Identity Informs My Mixed-Race Characters

 

When I submitted my first novel for publication in 2006, several agents, respectfully declining representation but generous enough to offer feedback, asked whether the protagonist—a mixed-race ballet dancer based on yours truly—really needed to be biracial rather than simply Black. If she were Black only, that might streamline the plot. One agent elaborated: if the main character was going to have an eating disorder, and feel torn between academia and the ballet world, then making her mixed—Black and Jewish—just seemed like too many complications. She had enough problems. But to me, a Black and Jewish eating disorder survivor torn between ballet and academia? That didn’t feel complicated at all. It was my normal!

Thankfully, the way we write and read about race and identity has changed since then. The #ownvoices #weneeddiversebooks movement pushed the industry to hire diverse editors, to amplify stories about marginalized people, written by marginalized writers. There are also several Black/white biracial authors—Danzy Senna, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Walker, James McBride—who are household names. I am grateful for their centering of biracial-ness—not in defiance of Blackness or whiteness or monoracial-ness, but as itself: an amalgamation of perspectives and racial being in a world that asks you to choose one race or the other, argues with you about your choices, and has a multitude of thoughts on what you represent. I think it’s fair to guess that all authors find it most comfortable to write from the perspective of like-me characters. Each of us is our own square one, after all. Black and Jewish is my default setting, so that lens becomes the default setting of my fiction.

But there are tripwires to avoid, writing about my own tiny demographic. If I am writing for a wide audience, consisting not only of like-me readers, but also of many not Black/white/Jewish/biracial readers, I want to accurately depict my people free of stereotypes and negative characterizations. For example, the last thing I want to do is feed the tragic mulatto stereotype: mired in identity crisis, both/neither Black and/or white, alienated by each race, perpetually other, never belonging anywhere. But worrying too much about how you are representing your marginalized main character’s marginalized group becomes an impossible constraint. You must shake off that inner scrutiny or your words have no chance of flowing. All kinds of humans face strife and alienation, make bad decisions, hurt one another, get messy, act like jerks. We Black/white/Jewish/biracial people are no more or less tragic than anyone else. Which is to say, some of us frankly are.

In my second novel, MIRROR ME, Eddie, the protagonist, is in fact mired in identity crisis, yearning in vain to belong. Eddie’s journey does indeed cycle through distress and sorrow. The object of his quest—belonging, love, connection to another who is like him—is a moving target, mostly embodied by his brother’s fiancée, Lucy, who alternately toys with, confides in, and professes to love him back. Eddie’s chase of Lucy brings out the desperate worst in him. He teeters dangerously on the edge of tragic.

Eddie’s identity issues stem from being not only biracial, but also adopted, knowing little about his biological parents. Eddie is also equipped with an alter-ego, Pär, the main narrator of the book, who alternately observes and takes over Eddie’s actions. Pär also holds—and withholds from Eddie himself—the secret about Eddie’s origin and birth circumstances.

Though I was not adopted, I spent several years as an adoption caseworker at the Spence Chapin agency. Part of my job was organizing meetings between birth parents and adoptive families, as well as placing infants in the arms of their adoptive parents. It was also my job to write what we called a “background,” which was a letter to every baby including all we could tell them about their birth parents and the reasons for their choice of adoptive placement.

All Eddie knows about his birthmother, Britta, is that she was Swedish, tall, blonde and too young to raise him. His birthfather was African, (at least according to the paperwork and the birthmother’s story) but no one ever bothered to learn where in that vast continent he came from. And it’s the ‘70s. No one encouraged the Ashers to celebrate either of Eddie’s cultures of origin, the way we adoption caseworkers did in the ‘90s.

Though my experience with adoption is largely professional, I have lived multiracial identity for over five decades. I was born to a white, Jewish mother and a Black father. What I share with Eddie is the experience of walking through the world under the umbrella of my mother’s whiteness, taking certain privileges for granted as we ran errands, rode buses, hailed taxis. I attracted little attention until Mom let go of my hand and I became, in the eyes of strangers, a small Black girl, out of place and all alone. It was different with my father, to whom I bore a stronger resemblance. Whether we visited his beloved barbershop in Harlem or attended a book party at Viking Press, where he was an art director, it was plainly visible that I belonged to and with him.

Unlike Eddie, I grew up valuing Blackness and understanding that it was part of me. Unlike Joanne, Eddie’s mother, who is always telling him to watch out for the Black kids (she doesn’t say “the other Black kids”), my mother valued and respected Blackness as well. And, while my mother was not religious, Jewishness was part of our home and my identity. My parents taught me about the joys of each culture, but also about the racism and antisemitism they each had faced, the harassment they had endured as an interracial couple in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In this respect I grew up immersed in who I was, but as an only child, I was often alone to make sense of it. It is no surprise that many of my closest friends are also of mixed race. We’ve all had different experiences of being of two races, depending on our appearances—how white or Black we look to others—our closeness with or rejection by family members, the places where we were raised.

I made sure that Eddie was not the only biracial character in MIRROR ME. Through his interactions and relationships with the other mixed characters, Lucy and Andy, in different ways, Eddie finds what he’s looking for—more or less. (No spoilers here!)

Lucy is the femme fatale of the book—beautiful, at least to Eddie—but cruel, due to her main childhood trauma: the suicide of her mother. Unable to trust others, Lucy is fickle in love, far better at receiving than giving. Lucy  is drawn to every man who pays attention to her, and Eddie is no exception. Eddie is drawn to their sameness, her girl-version-of-Eddie-ness. Their relationship is more spiritual than sexual, but she needs him, leads him on, while reminding him that she belongs to his brother. She is also an opportunist. Being lighter-skinned than her monoracial Black half-sisters affords Lucy unearned privileges—special treatment from their father, a spot in the corps de ballet of a prestigious but racially monochromatic dance company.

Andy, on the other hand, represents a more positive and joyful existence. Raised in Western Massachusetts by his white single mother, Andy is unaware of his father’s identity and deprived of any significant exposure to Black people. At the age of ten, Andy is sent to study dance in New York. Taken in by the Wynter family, Andy is enthralled by their world of lush, abundant Black culture—music, art, dance. Andy thrives, embracing it all, especially once he becomes a teen and finds the dance world a safe, hospitable place to be gay and out. Yet even with Andy’s joyous embrace of life, dance, and his biracial and queer identities, he faces heartbreak: losing the man he loves to none other than Lucy herself.

But personal loss and turmoil make Eddie, Lucy, and Andy human, not tragic. When a character moves through and learns from their pain, as opposed to getting stuck in it— when the tragedy is transitory, resolved as the narrative comes together—it’s only one leg in the rollercoaster ride that makes a story. By demonstrating a range of outlooks, experiences and emotional responses to life’s foibles, I strive to avoid stereotypes amongst my biracial characters, hopefully showcasing the multifaceted humanity we all belong to, each of us on our individual journeys.  While our mosaic selves may be complex, they are not complicated. Instead, the parts that distinguish and connect us add richness to the stories of how we all move through the world.

DEBS: Reds and readers, Lisa will be checking in on the comments, so do say "Hi," and ask her more about her book! I am especially intrigued by Eddie's alter ego! (And the ballet!)

 

Lisa Williamson Rosenberg is the author of Mirror Me (December 3, 2024; Little A) and Embers on the Wind (August 1, 2022; Little A). She is a former ballet dancer and psychotherapist specializing in depression, developmental trauma, and multiracial identity. Her essays have appeared in Literary Hub, Longreads, Narratively, Mamalode, and The Common. Her fiction has been published in the Piltdown Review and in Literary Mama, where Lisa received a Pushcart nomination. A born-and-raised New Yorker and mother of two college students, Lisa now lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband and dog. You can visit Lisa online at lisawrosenberg.com

Bluesky: @lwroseauthor.bsky.social

IG: @lisawrose.author (and on the linktree you can access all my platforms)

Facebook: Lwrose.author

Website: Lisa Williamson Rosenberg

 

Here's more about Mirror Me:

A psychiatric patient’s desperate search for answers reveals peculiar memories and unexpected connections in a twisty and mind-bending novel of love, family, betrayal, and secrets.

Eddie Asher arrives at Hudson Valley Psychiatric Hospital panicked that he may have murdered his brother’s fiancée, Lucy, with whom he shared a profound kinship. He can’t imagine doing such a terrible thing, but Eddie hasn’t been himself lately.

Eddie’s anxiety is nothing new to Pär, the one Eddie calls his Other, who protects Eddie from truths he’s too sensitive to face. Or so Pär says. Troubled by Pär’s increasing sway over his life, Eddie seeks out Dr. Richard Montgomery, a specialist in dissociative identities. The psychiatrist is Eddie’s best chance for piecing together the puzzle of what really happened to Lucy and to understanding his inexplicable memories of another man’s life.

But Montgomery’s methods trigger a kaleidoscope of memories that Pär can’t contain, bringing Eddie closer to an unimaginable truth about his identity.