Shadow and Bone. It’s a fair question. Alina, an unassuming cartographer in the general’s army, has just displayed hitherto unknown powers and created magical light in the dark wasteland known as the Fold. But “what are you,” and General Kirigan’s immediate dismissal of Alina’s straightforward responses, filled me with a sense of wincing familiarity. In Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishavese” books , Alina is white, but the Netflix series changed Alina’s race to reflect actress Jessie Mei Li’s half-Chinese heritage, and as a half-Chinese person myself, I know all too well that “What are you?” is the world’s worst and yet most popular guessing game for mixed-race people.