Primary Text: 
Diaz, N. (2019). Color Me In. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.  

Accolades:
Best Young Adult Fiction Book in English at the 2020 International Latino Book Awards

Books by the Same Author:
Diaz, N. (2021). "Caution Song." in S. Fennel (Ed.) Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx
            Diaspora. Flatiron Books. 
​

Natasha Diaz
 
👉 was born in New York
👉 has a black mother and a white Jewish father
👉 resides in Brooklyn, NY
👉 is a white presenting, multicultural novelist and screenwriter  
​

Color Me In (2019)
👉a young adult novel
      a coming of age novel
​      a bildungsroman 

👉 inspired by Diaz's life experiences:
       🔹Jewish coming of age rite, bat mitzvah
       🔹the revival of Harlem Renaissance
       🔹Black Lives Matter movement

👉 What obstacles and hardships challenge Nevaeh Levitz? What does Nevaeh discover about herself? 

🔹Plot Summary🔹
​
​Born of a black mother, the “white-presenting” Nevaeh has experienced only secondary racism—albeit searing, chance encounters like a naïve woman mistaking her mother as a nanny and a cop who profiled Uncle Zeke as a kidnapper take place on the bustling streets of New York City. But now her twin cousins, Janae and Jordan, vociferously call for Navaeh to choose a side, choose the skin she truly belongs to. Harlem and her maternal family enliven Nevaeh to write poetry, try cornrows, and join the community meetings. Indeed, Harlem wakes her poetic soul.
 
On the cusp of turning sixteen, Nevaeh navigates a burgeoning romance and teenage woes. A Harlem native, Jesus DeSantos provokes her by singling her out as “lightskin” and pulls her with magnetic attraction while her childhood friend Stevie vies for her attention. A former friend, Abby Jackson cries out for intervention and wags her barbed tongue at Nevaeh.
 
Her high-profile lawyer father has moved away from his family and is busy renovating his life as well as his swanky suburban mansion for his new mistress. Anxious for his control over Navaeh, Samuel Levitz insists on giving Nevaeh a belated bat mitzvah to immerse her in his social class and ethnic culture, but Navaeh is ambivalent about her Jewish identity and resists her father’s plan. Yet, the apprentice rabbi, Sarah Howard doggedly outmaneuvers Nevaeh into compliance and a reluctant relationship sprouts between them.
 
👉 Will Navaeh cross the threshold of womanhood as a Harlem girl or as a Jewish legacy kid?
👉 Will her romance with Jesus survive?
👉 Will Corinne Paire shake off her depression and recover a bond with her daughter?

🔹Multiracial, Multicultural American Identity🔹
​
How does American racial binarism silence and marginalize multiracial Americans with an Asian parent?
In what ways does colorism affect white-presenting biracial Americans? 

Literary Texts that Feature Multicultural, Multiethnic Characters: 
Flake, S. (2007). Who Am I Without Him? Short Stories about Girls and the Boys in Their Lives.
            New York, NY: Jump at the Sun Hyperion Books for Children. 
Yoon, N. (2016). The Sun Is also a Star. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

🔸Current Scholarship on Racial and Multiracial Awareness🔸

1) Even though approximately 25% of U.S. Latinos identify as Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, or Latino with African descent (Gonzalez-Barrera, 2016, qtd. in Bierly), it was only in 2014 that the US Census started to recognize Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latinos as distinct identity groups. In our classrooms as well as in society, Afro-Latinos are doubly marginalized due to “unhealthy generalizations about both the Black and Latino experience” (Bierly, paragraph 1) and many Afro-Caribbeans deal with linguistic and cultural barriers that their immigrant status further exacerbates.

2) Even though more than 95 percent of students in our school district are identified as Hispanic and many consider Spanish as their first language and home language, the seemingly homogeneous label of “Hispanic” or “Latinx” marginalizes some of them due to such factors as country of origin, monolingualism, ethnic background, gender orientation, and place of residence, among others. 

3) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on the danger of a single story imparts how a homogeneous monological perspective and curriculum silence and disenfranchise Afro-Latinos and Caribbean-Latinos, in particular. A single master narrative does not support students who are marooned in an island of racial, colorist, classist, and gender marginalities; our students are entitled to, and deserve to be supported with, authentic mirrors of their identities.

4) Using the analogy of quilt-making, Diaz celebrates the legacies from the deceased matriarch of the Paires, which Corinne Paire reclaims by the end of her novel. Quilts, in many African American narratives, evoke an abundant number of “authenticating details” (Brooks & McNair, p. 28) of African American culture, physical traits, and cultural markers. 

5) Many childrens of immigrants--as Grace Lin confides in her TedTalk,The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf --suffer race envy (the acute deficit thinking mentality that compels one to envy, and identity with, the other who has what one lacks). Teachers as well as parents need to encourage those who face racial hegemony in America to develop positive self-image by introducing them to "culturally conscious" literature (Biship, 2012). Further, teachers can use verbal and nonverbal cues such as positive reinforcement, class library, or classroom props to promote diversity and multiculturalism. 

🔸Research Projects and Class Activities🔸
A) Students watch teacher-selected and self-selected video presentations on the Harlem Renaissance and read the select poems by Langston Hughes. Afterwards, students identify rhythm and rhyme in these poems to fully appreciate the music of African-American Vernacular English. 

B) This young adult novel invites students to explore the ligature between history and literature and understand how American literature, as America is, is the daily negotiation of melting pot diversity. Students will create family trees of the Paires and the Levitz to delineate the complexity and diversity of the American identity. 
 
C) Students will learn about how different groups of people were forced, or chose, to be a part of diaspora and how they shaped America as a multiracial, multicultural union. Students will research 1992 Los Angeles Riots and investigate the cause and effect of this racial conflict. In what ways do some political or interst groups benefit from racializing conflicts? 

D) Research the racial categories that are featured in the US Census form. What limitations and contradictions do you notice in the list of racial groups? 

​E) Research one multiracial, multicultural person of eminence in history, politics, entertainment, literature, or social media. Prepare a 3-minute oral presentation about this person and what conflicts or hardships he or she had to contend with.  You need to share facts and claims from at least one news article and one interview (either as an MP 3 or MP 4 file) during your presentation.  


🔸TEKS Alignment🔸

RULE §110.38English Language Arts and Reading, English III (One Credit), Adopted 2017
 
 (6) Multiple genres: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts--literary elements. The student recognizes and analyzes literary elements within and across increasingly complex traditional, contemporary, classical, and diverse literary texts. The student is expected to:
    (A) analyze relationships among thematic development, characterization, point of view, significance of setting, and plot in a variety of literary texts;
    (B) analyze how characters' behaviors and underlying motivations contribute to moral dilemmas that influence the plot and theme;
    (C) evaluate how different literary elements shape the author's portrayal of the plot; and
    (D) analyze how the historical, social, and economic context of setting(s) influences the plot, characterization, and theme.
(8) Author's purpose and craft: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses critical inquiry to analyze the authors' choices and how they influence and communicate meaning within a variety of texts. The student analyzes and applies author's craft purposefully in order to develop his or her own products and performances. The student is expected to:
    (A) analyze the author's purpose, audience, and message within a text;
    (D) evaluate how the author's use of language informs and shapes the perception of readers;
    (E) evaluate the use of literary devices such as paradox, satire, and allegory to achieve specific purposes;
    (F) evaluate how the author's diction and syntax contribute to the mood, voice, and tone of a text

🔹Webliography and Bibliography🔹

​https://natashaerikadiaz.com/
👉This is Natasha Diaz's personal website, via which Diaz promotes her projects and interacts with writers in the making and readership in general. 

https://www.heyalma.com/natasha-diaz-on-turning-her-black-jewish-childhood-into-a-ya-novel/
👉This website delves into the biracial Jewish American identity that Natasha Diaz has experienced and tried to negotiate with her black identity. 

https://jwa.org/blog/bookclub/interview-natasha-diaz-about-color-me
👉This interview of Natasha Diaz is multilayered and eloquent enough to engage not only young adult readers but also scholars of American literature and identity. 

​https://thebookbratz.blogspot.com/2019/01/arc-review-color-me-in-by-natasha-diaz.html
👉This is a book review of Color Me In.  

​Bierly, R. (2020). “Afro-Latino Identities in the U.S. and Double Marginalization.”
          https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/art-and-culture/afro-latino-identities-us-and-double-marginalization.
👉This academic article exposes the blind spot in the American racial discourse and calls for a broader definition of African-American identity and experience as well as other multiethnic Americans.'

🔹Teacher Interview🔹

​Ms. Norma, a veteran ELA teacher, appreciates this young adult novel for its first-person narrative point of view, the authentic voice of the protagonist, and the novel's message of social awareness about colorism. The only reservations about adopting this young adult novel, according to Ms. Norma, are its frequent descriptions of teenage drinking. Even though Nevaeh’s experiences are genuine and compelling, the vivid description of intoxication and gustatory imagery of alcoholic consumption is rather worrisome because young readers are very impressionable, and uncritical absorption of the actions and descriptions may normalize underaged drinking. Teachers may consider facilitating discussion about this risky behavior.