ABSTRACT Title of Document: ROMANCE, RACE AND RESISTANCE IN BEST-SELLING AFRICAN AMERICAN NARRATIVE Robin Virginia Smiles, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Directed By: Professor Mary Helen Washington, Department of English This dissertation critically examines popular romantic fiction by African American writers and argues for its inclusion in the canons and curricula of African American literary studies. While novels that privilege themes of love and romance and that appeal primarily to a mass-market audience have tended to be cast as antithetical to matters of racial uplift and social protest, my work reverses this bias, establishing such texts as central to these concerns. I argue that popular romantic fiction and its authors have a particular story to tell in the history of African American literature, one that reveals a desire to address racial concerns but also, as importantly, to reach a wide audience. Using the work of critical race theorists and feminist studies of the romance and sentimental genres, I identify the “racial project” undertaken in the popular romantic fiction of three best-selling African American writers in the latter-half of the twentieth century-- Frank Yerby, Toni Morrison, and Terry McMillan. I begin my study with a discussion of the “contingencies of value” and the need for an ongoing process of canon revision in African American literary studies. In Chapter One, I argue that in his first published novel, The Foxes of Harrow (1946), Yerby uses the platform of historical romance to illuminate the instability and unreliability of racial identity. In Chapter Two, I argue that in Tar Baby (1981), Morrison integrates the narratives of romance and race to critique the popular romance genre’s lack of racial diversity and perpetuation of white female beauty. In Chapter Three, I argue McMillan uses her first three novels, Mama (1987), Disappearing Acts (1989) and Waiting to Exhale (1992) to advance new paradigms of contemporary domesticity that for the young, urban, upwardly mobile black females portrayed in her novels both disrupt idealized notions of love and marriage and redefine gender roles within heterosexual unions. This study illuminates the critical biases that have shaped African American literary history, calls for a reassessment of those practices, and most importantly, in arguing for the serious study of popular romantic fiction, provides a critical framework for taking on the study of fiction – popular romantic or not – that has been similarly neglected by literary critics. ROMANCE, RACE AND RESISTANCE IN BEST-SELLING AFRICAN AMERICAN NARRATIVE By Robin Virginia Smiles Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Advisory Committee: Professor Mary Helen Washington, Chair Associate Professor Kandice Chuh Associate Professor Sangeeta Ray Professor Barry Pearson Professor Mary Corbin Sies © Copyright by Robin Virginia Smiles 2009 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the many voices that contributed to the completion of this project. First, Mary Helen Washington’s contribution and commitment to my project is immeasurable. As my dissertation advisor, she read every draft of this project, too many to count, and offered valuable critical and instructive feedback, without which this project would be much less focused, polished and potentially influential. Kandice Chuh, Sangeeta Ray and Gene Jarrett were all instrumental in shaping the theoretical lens for this study, and, as importantly, offering much needed encouragement and validation along the way. Others in the English Department deserve special mention, including Theresa Coletti, whose writing workshop established a framework for completion and Manju Suri, whose attention to detail made sure my efforts were all official. I would also like to acknowledge the Office of Recruitment, Retention and Diversity, particularly Johnetta Davis and the PROMISE staff, for providing me a university home outside of my department Over the course of this project, I’ve developed relationships that have (and continue to) exceed my expectations. Such is the case of my dissertation writing group: Kenyatta Albeny, Kaylen Tucker, Shaun Myers, Shirley Moody and Christie Williams. While we were brought together for academic reasons, our experiences over the years have reached far beyond the intellectual pursuit. I am so grateful for the support of these women and our enduring friendship. It’s hard to imagine the journey without any one of them. ii Finally, I would like to acknowledge my family, who studied, struggled and persevered right alongside me. My mother Juanita and father Jesse guided me toward my strengths and gave me the self-confidence to pursue them. My brother Monte and sister Jan (and their families) pushed me to excel but, importantly, accepted me in spite of. And, most importantly, my husband Tyrone found faith, hope and love, when I needed them the most. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv Introduction: Romancing Canons ................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Reclaiming Race in Frank Yerby: The ‘Prince of Pulpsters’ ................... 28 Chapter 2: Toni Morrison and the Business of Love: Tar Baby as Popular Romance ..................................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 3: Terry McMillan and the Quest for Domestic Success ............................ 109 Conclusion: Critical Needs and the New Literary Marketplace .............................. 158 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 164 iv Introduction: Romancing Canons “Above all I am interested in how agendas in criticism have disguised themselves and, in so doing, impoverished the literature it studies.” —Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (1992) “Scholars of early 21 st century literature and reading practices must bring to their research a recognition of and respect for what has always been true: there are many ways to know a book.” —Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers (2002) When Terry McMillan’s third novel Waiting to Exhale was published in 1992, publishing industry observers, journalists and even literary critics were surprised by the novel’s commercial success. The book sold over 650,000 hard copies the first year and stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for 43 weeks. 1 Articles in a number of mainstream magazines and newspapers reported on the book’s widespread appeal by quoting experts who likened McMillan to a “literary phenomenon,” and critics who claimed she was the “ first bestselling African American popular fiction writer” (Richards 21). Few, if any, mentioned African American novelist Frank Yerby, who, although he died a year before Waiting to Exhale ’s debut, published best-selling novels for over four decades. Yerby’s presence undermines the claim that McMillan was the “first” or the “only” African American writer to achieve unprecedented commercial success. Yerby’s first published novel, The Foxes of Harrow (1946), a historical romance novel centered on a Louisiana slaveowner’s rise to wealth and notoriety, was an immediate commercial success, selling more than 2 million copies and making a 1 See Paulette Richards for a full discussion of the sales figures for McMillan’s novels. 1 number of best-sellers list. A Hollywood studio purchased the movie rights for the book for $150,000, and popular actors Rex Harrison and Maureen O’Hara starred in the 1947 feature film. 2 Yerby went on to publish over 30 more novels, most of which were best sellers and two of which were also made into films. It is not surprising that most literary scholars do not immediately connect Yerby and McMillan. With the exception of the initial critical attention Yerby received in the late 1940s and early 1950s and a few critical essays on his published work over the past few decades, he has been virtually excluded from literary scholarship and criticism. When Yerby died in 1991, he had published 33 novels, five short stories, and several poems; yet, he is not mentioned in the pages of most contemporary anthologies of African American or American fiction. Until very recently, the few anthologies that include Yerby reprint one of his few short stories that contain overt racial content, but nothing of his popular romance novels—his more representative work. 3 The story behind Yerby’s critical obscurity lays bare the ways in which, as Toni Morrison argues, “agendas in criticism have disguised themselves and, in so doing, impoverished the literature it studies,” and, I will add, literary studies (Morrison, Playing in the Dark , 8-9). For decades, literary critics have assumed that Yerby’s popular novels, which typically privilege themes of love and romance, mostly feature white protagonists, and primarily avoid overt or politicized discussions of racism and racial discrimination, are insignificant to African American literary 2 See Louis Hill Pratt for a discussion of sales figures related to the movie adaptation of The Foxes of Harrow . 3 Gene Jarrett includes an excerpt from The Foxes of