Tara Betts’s volume Arc & Hue rhythmically and thematically explores life in its varied experiences and personal struggles. Betts creatively portrays the tensions of negotiating the world and forging an identity. In a society in which skin color continues to determine perception, Betts reveals the feeling of betrayal of white people who mistakenly take the speaker as one of them, black people who envy her light skin and isolate her, and the painful knowledge that a mixed race woman can never fully satisfy all the expectations from distinct racial groups.