Race Passing and American IndividualismUniversity of Massachusetts Press, 2003 - 167 páginas A literary study of the ambiguities of racial identity in American culture; In the literature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, black characters who pass for white embody a paradox. By virtue of the one drop rule that long governed the nation's race relations, they are legally black. Yet the color of their skin makes them visibly - and therefore socially - white. In this book, Kathleen Pfeiffer explores the implications of this dilemma by analyzing its treatment in the fiction of six writers: William Dean Howells, Frances E. W. Harper, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen. Although passing for white has sometimes been viewed as an expression of racial self-hatred or disloyalty, Pfeiffer argues that the literary evidence is much more ambiguous than that. Rather than indicating a denial of blackness or co-optation by the dominant white culture, passing can be viewed as a form of self-determination consistent with American individualism. In their desire to manipulate personal identity in order to achieve social acceptance and upward mobility, light-skinned blacks who pass for white are no different than those Americans who reinv |
Índice
Introduction | 1 |
Passing and the Sentimental Novel | 18 |
Passing and the Rise of Realism | 39 |
Direitos de autor | |
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Palavras e frases frequentes
accept American Angela appearance argues artistic attention Autobiography become Cane Carl character claim Clare clear clearly color connection continually contrast created critics critique cultural defined demonstrates desire difference distinctions early embrace evidence Ex-Colored experience explains fact Fauset feels fiction finds Frances Frank Harlem Harper's Howells Howells's ideology Imperative Duty important individual instance Iola Leroy Irene James Weldon Jean Toomer Johnson language Larsen letter lines literary Literature live Man's minstrel shows moral narrative Negro never Nigger notes novel offers Olney passing for white Plum Bun political position present published question race racial identity references reflects rejection response reveals seeks seems segregation sense skin social sort South success suggests tion tradition underscore understanding Van Vechten Vechten writing wrote York
Referências a este livro
American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination Black Hawk Hancock Visualização de excertos - 2004 |
Class-passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture Gwendolyn Audrey Foster Visualização de excertos - 2005 |