Excerpt from New People by Danzy Senna, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Now Khalil and Lisa are changing, turning into something closer to Maria, and she feels like Charon, leading them across the river to the dark side.

Lisa bought a T-shirt on the street in Harlem a few weeks ago that reads, It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand.

Maria sometimes catches sight of herself walking with them through the city and thinks what an unlikely arbiter of blackness she is. How strange that it should be she to ferry them across.

Here in the restaurant, the woman examines Maria's hand, twisting it this way and that, and Maria too peers at her own hand, the ring, as if it belongs to somebody else. The stone glimmers as she tilts it beneath the light at different angles.

It is a large sapphire surrounded by twelve white diamonds. It belongs—belonged—to Khalil's grandmother, the one with the camp numbers tattooed on her arm. She lives on the Upper East Side. She has given her blessing. Now that Maria is here, the conversation turns to the wedding. It always turns to the wedding.

She listens to Khalil and Lisa imparting the details as if it's they who are getting married. It will be at the lighthouse on Martha's Vineyard. It will be in May. They will break a glass (Jewish) and jump the broom (black).

Who's going to be there? the woman wants to know.

It is Lisa who answers. All the Niggerati.

* * *

That weekend, a filmmaker arrives at their apartment to interview them for a documentary about "new people." That is actually the working title of her film: New People. Her name is Elsa. She has frizzy blond hair and golden brown skin and green eyes. She stands in the foyer, glittering with snowdrops. In her strong teeth Maria can see the Scandinavian half of her heritage. She introduces the others she has brought with her—an Asian-American cameraman named Ansel with hair down to his waist, and a white woman with a buzz cut named Heidi. They crowd in the hallway, damp and smiling.

Elsa is older than Maria and Khalil. She is well into her forties. Maria does the math. This means she would have been born in the 1950s, the Era of Mulatto Martyrs—which Maria knows from the history books was a whole other scene. Maria and Khalil were each born in 1970, the beginning of the Common Era.

Elsa says that when she met Khalil at a party uptown, she knew he was perfect for the film. He wanted Maria to meet Elsa before they committed themselves to it. Khalil and Maria sit on the couch now while Elsa's crew hovers in the background, filming their conversation. Elsa wants them to talk naturally, to be spontaneous.

They tell jokes and share stories they have told before, stories that already feel like lore. His parents met at Freedom Summer and Maria's mother was once a member of SNCC.

Khalil says: Sometimes she teases me about acting Jewish. You know, like my rabbinical hand gestures. Sometimes I tease her about acting WASPy. The way she says "duvet" instead of comforter. We're like a Woody Allen movie, with melanin.

Elsa scribbles notes. After the interview she and her crew film Maria and Khalil walking hand in hand through Prospect Park. It is only late afternoon, the snow has melted, and it is nearly dark. The longer Elsa films, the more Maria and Khalil have to pretend they're having a conversation. Her mind is elsewhere. She is tired of being on camera already. She wants to be back in the library under the artificial lights with her papers spread out around her, the headphones playing the children's voices, a mystery about to be solved.

But back at the apartment, Elsa and her crew stick around. They film Maria and Khalil chopping vegetables in their kitchenette, making a Moroccan tagine while Ornette Coleman plays on the stereo. Afterward, they each sign forms agreeing to be in the movie. Khalil seems happy about it and Elsa, grinning, tells them how thrilled she is to have them on board. She says they are exactly the subjects she has been looking for. Maria goes through the motions, smiles along, but she is aware of a pain in her chest, a tightness to her breathing.

* * *

The apartment feels different after the crew has packed up and gone—more barren than it did before. Maria sits in bed, flipping through the brochure for Jonestown. She can see Khalil through the open door. He is seated in the living room, bare-chested in boxers, staring at something on the computer screen.

From New People. Published by Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group USA (LLC). Copyright © Danzy Senna, 2017.