Nevaeh's parents have separated; while her father is at their home in White Plains, N.Y., she and her mom, Corinne, have moved into Corinne's family's brownstone in Harlem. Corinne's sister and Nevaeh's dad hate each other, so Nevaeh barely knows this side of her family. And since she has "the only thing close to light skin in [her] family" she feels like "an off-white blip amid a stunning array of deep chestnut and mahogany." While her proximity to whiteness helped her stay under the radar at her wealthy, mostly white schools, she now acutely feels the weight of being "white-passing."
As she deals with her mother's depression, her father's lack of empathy and a best friend who is hoping to go to school abroad, Nevaeh tries to find a space where her mother's Liberian and Jamaican roots make sense with her father's Jewish background. It's not until she experiences a frightening brush with potent racism that she recognizes she "was so wrapped up in believing that [she] was owed some official validation" that she "failed... to see the boundless influence at [her] fingertips."
Color Me In, Natasha Díaz's YA debut, borrows a lot from Díaz's own experience. In an author's note, Díaz points out her similarities with Nevaeh: "I am a multiracial woman who inadvertently passes as white... my heritage is Liberian and Brazilian as much as it is Jewish... and I have a wonderful, loud, blended, multicultural family." Through micro- and macroaggressions, personal stumbles, genuine sadness and a hard-won first romance, Nevaeh's struggles excellently reflect the teen experience and bring her to a place where she can think, "I am me, in all my ambiguous glory." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness