Book excerpt: By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans--groups that are held to be neither black nor white--the author explores how the color line accommodated--or refused to accommodate--"other" ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, she investigates the ways in which racially "in-between" people and communities were brought to heel within the South's prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation.