Mixed Edited by Chandra Prasad W W Norton, 326pp, £10.99 ISBN 0393327868

"Even though it's hip to be mixed, it still doesn't feel very good," notes Rebecca Walker in her introduction to this "anthology of short fiction on the multiracial experience".

Diversity may be a fashionable buzzword, but the voices in these stories are predominantly lonely, wistful young adults who feel conflicted and marginalised, and who struggle to find their place

in the world. Diana Abu-Jaber's "My Elizabeth" connects Palestinian and Native American displacement; in "Effigies" an African-American academic is shaken when his white Irish mother comes back into his life; and "Unacknowledged" looks at the turmoil created in a Filipino-American family when an illegitimate cousin comes to stay. Perhaps the best offering is Peter Ho Davies's "Minotaur", in which a half-man/half-bull is trapped in a labyrinth of paralysing thoughts.

There is some exquisite writing here, but the project itself seems laboured. The authors provide explanatory passages at the end of their pieces, rather than leaving us to draw our own conclusions. Many of the writers are academics or creative-writing professors at US universities, and the imprint

of a self-regarding intellectual community is apparent. It's too tempting not to say that this book is of mixed quality.

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