Blend In or Fade Out

A beating heart of a memoir, Blend In or Fade Out is a piercing and honest narrative of a young woman’s Black experience in 1960s and 1970s Minneapolis as a biracial adoptee navigating identity, love, brokenness, spirituality and belonging. It is a remarkable story of a young girl who is desperate to discover her true identity.

A biracial baby adopted into a middle-class Black family, Colnese Hendon struggles to know where she belongs. Growing up in South Minneapolis during the 1960s and 1970s, Colnese searches for her birth mother, and herself, while navigating Minnesota’s racial and cultural divide. Abusive men, drugs and alcohol, and her own violence and vindictiveness plague her life. Heartbreaking and inspiring in more ways than one, Colnese eventually finds her path to healing—a lifelong journey.

Colnese’s unfettered look at the self from childhood to early adulthood is emotional, whole-hearted, and packed. Every moment is pivotal and striking as she discovers rage within sorrow, love within pain, and belonging where it feels no answers are to be had. She walks this life amid a deftly drawn and exceedingly spirited cast of pimps, pastors, choir singers, dancers, grandmothers, perfect strangers, infants, bankers, and Black power advocates creating electric prose and a set of biographies within her own.