A True History Full of Romance - Mixed Marriages and Ethnic Identity in Dutch Art, News Media, and Popular Culture (1883-1955) (Electronic book text)

This important study about ethnically mixed marriages in the Netherlands of the 1883-1955 period offers a compelling overview on the nature and experience of ethnicity from a wide range of scholarly perspectives. Drawing from exhaustive research in the Netherlands, Europe and the Americas, Altena offers illuminating new insights into mixed-marriage families as they were depicted in the arts and in news media; and how the families themselves in turn reacted to, and influenced those images. The author focuses on well-documented individuals and shows how they gained a coherent voice in Dutch culture. Altena attributes to them conscious agency in their own self-presentation, rather than just viewing them as victims of racial prejudice. A timely contribution to the debate surrounding ethnicity and integration in Dutch society, this work demonstrates how that process was mediated by the various agencies, while placing special emphasis on the marginal groups within central news media as crucial in the opinion making.