Futureface by Alex Wagner is a biography documenting Wagner’s search to grasp a better understanding of her family history and discover her true identity. Wagner is a mixed-race Burmese Luxembourgish woman, and her journey to find herself takes her across the planet.

After grappling with her racial identity, Wagner sets out on a quest to try and learn more about her ancestors. This mission takes her all over the world. She travels to Burma to learn more about her mother’s side of the family, who fled from the country in the 1960s. She also goes to Europe, to try and dig deeper beneath her father’s seemingly “white bread” history. All the while, trying to find a group that she belongs to and figure out who she truly is.

As a mixed-race American teen, I could relate to a lot of the points and issues Wagner brought up in her book, and I thought the premise was very engaging. I also got to learn more about country’s histories that I didn’t know much about. That said, I found it hard to get excited about this book, which I thought would be right up my alley. Wagner makes a lot of guesses about her ancestors throughout the book, and the explanations of these theories got slightly boring.

I would recommend this book to mixed-race people, as well as those interested in ancestry.