Westtown Meeting member Karabi Acharya recently let us know of two upcoming events connected to herself and Kat Yeh, also a member:
“I've written a book on the Multiracial experience and I'd love to share it with the Westtown Meeting in some way. I'm Westtown class of '82 (used to be Bhattacharyya) and the book includes some stories of my time at Westtown. I've included some information about it below. Multiracial people are the fastest growing racial group in the US and yet we are largely invisible. This book, Multitudes: The Multiracial Experience and How to Forge a Culture of Absolute Belonging, seeks to bring the Multiracial experience into our advocacy for racial justice.
I will be in conversation with Kat Yeh ’82, a celebrated children’s book author, at Celia Bookshop in Swarthmore on Nov 15 at 5pm and would love to see folks from the Meeting there. I'm also holding a virtual launch party on zoom, Nov 10, 7-8pm. All the details are below:
· Register for Celia Bookshop here.
· Register for the virtual launch (free) here.
· You can purchase (and preorder) the book from your favorite bookstore. If you order it from Celia Bookshop, it will come signed and with stickers (!). You can also request it from your local library.”
Here’s the publisher’s description:
A groundbreaking new portrait of Multiracial America—who gets counted, who gets seen, and who gets to belong.
More than 34 million Americans identify as Multiracial, making them one of the fastest-growing populations in the country. Yet they remain among the least counted, least studied, and least understood—often forced into categories that fail to reflect who they are.
In Multitudes, renowned public health expert Dr. Karabi Acharya draws on groundbreaking research, personal stories, and intimate interviews to reveal the profound consequences of this invisibility. She explores how being Multiracial shapes identity, health, relationships, and belonging—and how the systems we rely on, from census forms to medical research, continue to overlook millions of Americans.
At once deeply personal and rigorously researched, Multitudes illuminates the resilience and creativity of people navigating a world that insists on putting them in boxes. It is both a mirror and a manifesto: a powerful argument for moving beyond rigid racial categories toward a more expansive understanding of identity, connection, and community.
Urgent, illuminating, and ultimately hopeful, Multitudes is for anyone who has ever been asked “What are you?”—and for everyone who wants to understand a changing America and imagine a future in which everyone has the freedom to define where they belong.
