This collection presents a scholarly attempt to map the rapidly emerging field of mixed-race literature, defined as texts written by authors who represent multiple cultural and literary traditions - African-European, Native-European, Eurasian, African-Asian, and Native-African American.

The editor's conclusion argues that rather than following the tragic employment assigned to mulattos, octoroons and half-bloods, the evolution of mixed-race texts has been from tragedy to trickster. The role of the tragic trickster facilitates a shift in which new and distinct literary strategies and forms emerge. These models represent critical sites from which to theorize the overall formation of American literature and to complicate its formation in ways that unfold our usual notions of race, gender and culture.