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Dr. Cortés elevates the theme of intermarriage to a new level of complexity in his closely observed and emotionally fraught memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage Before Its Time, adapted from his nationally successful one-man play, A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.
In his new autobiography, Dr. Cortés lovingly chronicles his family’s tumultuous, decades-long spars over religion, class, and culture, from his early years in legally segregated Kansas City during the 1940s to his return to Berkeley (where his parents met) in the 1950s, and to his parents’ separation, reconciliation, deaths, and eventual burials at the Rose Hill Cemetery.
Carlos E. Cortés is a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity and is a creative/cultural advisor for Nickelodeon’s Peabody Award–winning children’s television series Dora the Explorer and its spinoff, Go, Diego, Go!, for which he received a 2009 NAACP Image Award. He performs his one-man autobiographical play, A Conversation with Alana: One Boy\'s Multicultural Rite of Passage, across the country and has lectured widely throughout the world. He is General Editor of the Sage Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, due out in 2013.