Blend In or Fade Out - by Colnese M Hendon (Paperback)

About the Book

Blend In or Fade Out is a piercing and honest narrative of a young woman's Black experience in 1960s-1970s Minneapolis as a biracial adoptee navigating identity, love, brokenness, spirituality, and belonging.

Book Synopsis

Blend In or Fade out is a remarkable story of a young girl who is desperate to discover her true identity. A biracial baby adopted into a middle-class Black family, Colnese struggles to know where she belongs. Growing up in South Minneapolis during the 1970s, Colnese searches for her birth mother, and herself, while navigating Minnesota's racial and cultural divide. Abusive men, drugs and alcohol, and her own violence and vindictiveness plague her life. Heartbreaking and inspiring in more ways than one, Colnese eventually finds her path to healing--a lifelong journey.Author, Colnese Hendon chronicles the difficulties she experienced in navigating Minnesota's racial and cultural divide during the 1960s and 1970s as a biracial adoptee, as well as her endeavors to discover her identity and to find a place where she truly belongs.

Review Quotes

Colnese Hendon's unfettered look at the self from childhood to early adulthood is emotional, whole-hearted, and packed. Hendon finds herself in a range of communities each asking something of her-church services, adoptive family, the desegregation of public schools, the bustle of the nightlife scene, a tent of a revival, the porch of a rival. Every moment is pivotable and striking as she discovers rage within sorrow, love within pain, and belonging where it feels no answers are to be had. She walks this life amid a deftly drawn and exceedingly spirited cast of pimps, pastors, choir singers, dancers, grandmothers, perfect strangers, infants, bankers, and Black power advocates creating electric prose and a set of biographies within her own.

Her detailed accounts are given so honestly, I found myself crying for her loss, her wins, her standstills and showdowns. A narrative and personal history I only wished I had available earlier to my understanding of my home city and the human experience and resilience as a biracial young woman in the 1960-1970s.

A striking and important addition to the Minnesota literary canon.

Ari Tison (She/Her)

Poet

Author

Teaching Artist