Danzy Senna's darkly comic take on racial identity

Bookends with Mattea Roach

The American novelist draws on her experience growing up in an interracial family in her edgy, prize-winning fiction. Raised with an acute black consciousness, during a time when "'mixed' wasn't an option; you were either black or white," Senna brings an awareness — and astute analysis — of class, race and identity to all her writing. She spoke with Eleanor Wachtel in 2018 about her novel New People and her memoir Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History.