Imperfect Unions fits neatly into the evolving discourse on cultural productions of race in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, offering engaging, vivid readings of performances of miscegenation. Examining both public and private enactments of miscegenation in literature and drama from the end of the Civil War to World War I, Paulin chooses to read the history of race relations in the US through the historical hegemony of the “black–white paradigm,” which she believes reduces race “to one of two narrowly defined, oppositional, and monolithic categories: black or white” (x). While Paulin gives ample time to showing how this black–white binary served to obscure or overwrite more complex racial actualities, and vice versa how “spectacularized enactments of interracial entanglements rehearsed, remade, reiterated, and reproduced the overpowering presence of the black–white dyad” (x), her arguments are nevertheless hampered by their overcommitment to this dualism. By foregrounding the binary in her analysis from the very outset, Paulin constricts her own approach to her texts, having to narrowly engage with her material through the very binary she attempts to challenge.

For example, in the fascinating chapter entitled “The Remix,” which examines cultural manifestations of Afro-Indian intimacies, Paulin discusses the increasing diversity of races in the late nineteenth-century US, showing how “[m]ore and more shades were emerging on the American palette” (146), thereby both complicating the black–white binary and providing the impetus to reinforce it. But one is left wondering whether reading cultural productions of Afro-Indian miscegenation as simply a strategy to decentre the black–white binary is somewhat reductive. While Paulin attends to the figurative and literal mixing of skin colour onstage – in that African American and mulatta actors portrayed American Indian characters – she nevertheless chooses to identify these complexities of hue as belonging “explicitly with black identity, despite the diversity that they embody and the racial mixing that they represent” (174), in the process ignoring an opportunity to engage more critically with histories of redface performance by African Americans.

Paulin is at her most convincing when she presents her fictional works, describing characters and motivations with a rare warmth and clarity. A short story by W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Comet,” a postapocalyptic tale of two survivors, a black man and a white woman, is evocatively depicted: “But then a simple and extraordinary event occurs: they pause for a moment, resisting the black–white binary … They rise to the celestial, biblical status of an interracial Adam and Eve” (232). Elsewhere, Paulin uses a comparative approach to juxtapose diverse fictional texts, producing vigorous analyses of works that span the extremes of the creative spectrum. She successfully argues that plays such as Bartley Campbell's 1882 The White Slave, a work of seemingly racist ideology, in fact exposed a fascination with and exploration of the “contours and implications” of miscegenation (68). Behind the entire work lies a Foucauldian perspective that there was in fact no relegation of miscegenation to the shadows but instead an obsessive anxiety hovering over it.

Somewhat predictably, Paulin's examination of miscegenation ends by reflecting on the election of President Obama, which, according to Paulin, remains woefully “tethered to binarisms” (238) – as do her arguments. Adapting her theoretical interventions from literary studies to provide a brief examination of the life story of President Obama, it proves a struggle to agree with her that Obama's own performance of race is a reminder of the “narrow avenues available to him for his political, educational, and cultural journey” (238).

Overall, however, Paulin is generous when it comes to providing context. A large swath of the narrative is given to the discussion of wider national and transnational changes and continuities, providing a wealth of historical background that helps firmly situate her readings, underscore their relevance and disrupt any navel-gazing. This is truly an interdisciplinary work, encompassing critical race theory, literary history and American studies, among others, and along with other recent works in theatre and performance studies it will help expand the relevance of the field beyond its usual audience.