We are all shaped by the cultures that surround us—but what happens when those cultures collide? When your mother embodies one world and your father another?

Born to a Peruvian mother and an American father, Marlowe’s early life spanned continents—from the Philippines to Ecuador, Brazil to the US—leaving her with a sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere at once. In this searing follow-up to Portrait of a Feminist, she turns that fractured inheritance into a series of luminous essays on race, class, gender, faith, and family.

Now raising two sons with her Syrian husband, Marlowe is still living the borderlands she writes about. Portrait of a Mestiza is both a personal reckoning and a bold argument: The binaries dividing us were never inevitable. This is a book for anyone who has ever felt like too much of one thing yet not enough of another—and a call to build something more honest in the space between.

“Portrait of a Mestiza not only transports readers to cultures and countries across the globe, but also to places not found on any map—places inhabited by the soul.

– Norma E. Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera

““Portrait of a Mestiza offers readers a heart-warming and heart-wrenching portrait of a girl becoming a woman through a wide-angle lens that reveals the joys and challenges of playing multiple roles in multiple cultures.

– Norma E. Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera

““Each essay in Portrait of Mestiza is an exquisitely cut gem—luminous, precise, and hard-won.

– Natasha Singh, Author and Co-Founder of Asha Rising

Portrait of a Mestiza’s power lies in the author’s ability to transform intimate family moments into sharp cultural critiques.

-Kirkus Reviews