MIXING NIA

Nia's parents, one Afro-American, one Caucasian, got in the groove together in the late 1960s – 'nuff said. Now Nia works at a New York ad agency and becomes acutely self-conscious of her light skin when she's the lucky one assigned to whip out the copy for liquor ads that specifically target black kids. It's too much a betrayal of her ideals and Nia quits Madison Avenue. Now embarking on the career of a 'serious' writer, she concentrates on the subject that keeps coming back: her parents' marriage and the racial dynamics that brought them together, but which now seem to polarize society. At least Nia tries to concentrate on the project. Competing love affairs with both a black professor of African-American literature and her white ex-colleague from the ad world only further muddy Nia's incomplete picture of her pigmentation. As the old bluesman once said, it won't rub off, baby! And Alison Swan's smart, snappy romantic comedy explores the burden of trying (or needing) to view the world through color-colored glasses and demonstrates that the eternal triangle now comes in several shades.