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Finding One's Identity in Manchild in the Promised Land, Sag Harbor and Brown Girl, Brownstones

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Finding One's Identity in Manchild in the Promised Land, Sag Harbor and Brown Girl, Brownstones Michelle Bassetti Growing Up Black in America: Finding One's Identity in Modernas Culturas e em Literaturas Mestrado Dissertação de Manchild in the Promised Land, Sag in One's Identity Finding Harbor and Brown Girl, Brownstones Novembro 2018 Sag Harbor Estudos Ingleses e Norte-Americanos Ingleses e Estudos Growing Up Black in America: in UpAmerica: Black Growing and Michelle Bassetti Michelle Novembro 2018 Brown Girl, Brownstones Girl, Brown Manchild in the Promised Land inthe Promised Manchild , , Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Líteraturas e Culturas Modernas, especialização em Estudos Ingleses e Norte-Americanos, realizada sob a orientação científica de Professora Doutora Teresa Botelho i Dedicated to My father Emilio AGRADECIMENTOS Thank you, To Marco, who shared the last five years by my side, loving and supporting me everyday even when I was on the other side of Europe. Thank you for contributing in opening my eyes towards a more concrete view of life, giving shape to the woman I am now and the one I will become after this study journey. To my best friends Vania, Camilla, Alessandra, Ida, Caterina, Francesco and Devis for letting me through all the difficulties, providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout the hardest days of this Master degree. Many thanks also to my supervisor Teresa Botelho, for introducing me to this topic as well for her patience and support on the way. ii Growing Up Black in America: Finding One's Identity in Manchild in the Promised Land, Sag Harbor and Brown Girl, Brownstones Michelle Bassetti PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Identidade, afro americano, bildungsroman RESUMO: Através duma leitura pormenorizada de Manchild in the Promised Land de Claude Brown, Sag Harbor de Colson Whitehead e Brown Girl, Brownstones de Paule Marshall como exemplos de Bildungsroman, esta dissertação visa enfatizar a fluidez deste género comparando o Bildungsroman tradicional com o Bildungsroman étnico e demonstrar como esses romances desafiam o género do Bildungsroman tradicional reformulando as suas características. Ao analisar os percursos de personagem Afro Americanos, este trabalho propõe uma leitura diversificada dos aspetos sociais e culturais do Bildungsroman. Esta leitura considerará a construção da identidade de jovens Afro Americanos nos romances selecionados, nomeadamente Sonny, Benji e Selina, interrogando os vários factores culturais que pautuam os seus processos de maturação. KEYWORDS: Identity, african american, bildungsroman ABSTRACT: Through a close reading of Claude Brown’s Manchild in The Promised Land, Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor and Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones as examples of Bildungsroman, this dissertation aims to emphasize the fluidity of the genre by comparing the traditional Bildungsromand with the Ethnic Bildungsroman, and see how these novels challenge the traditional Bildungsroman genre by reformulating its characteristics. By analyzing characters of ethnic heritage, this work proposes a diverse reading of the social and cultural aspects of the Bildungsroman. This reading will consider the construction of identity of the children in the novels, iii namely Sonny, Benji and Selina, as well as interrogating the various cultural aspects that influence their development. iv INDEX Introduction..................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: Narratives of Growing Up: from the Bildungsroman to the Ethnic Bildungsroman................................................................................................. 8 1. 1. The Bildungsroman ......................................................................... 8 1. 2. The Ethnic Bildungsroman..............................................................19 Chapter II: Growing up black in an adult world............................................. 30 2. 1. Family Relationships...................................................................... 30 2. 2. Relationships with other adults..................................................... 42 Chapter III: Growing up black with the peers................................................. 47 3. 1. Growing Up with a Negative Peer Pressure................................... 49 3. 2. The Ambiguity of Peer Pressure.................................................... 57 Chapter IV: Finding One's Identity: The Authentic Version of Yourself......... 64 4. 1. Where does one run to when he's already in the promised land?: Finding yourself by leaving and coming back........................................... 64 4. 2. I'm a Geek: Finding that your blackness is enough........................ 73 4. 3. That was all she was, she did not belong here: Finding yourself by reconciling with your origins.................................................................... 79 Conclusion..................................................................................................... 86 v Bibliography .................................................................................................. 90 vi INTRODUCTION The characteristics of a literary genre can change according to its historical and social context. The Bildungsroman novel genre is no exception. When reading a Bildungsroman, the reader is given access to another human mind, that of the protagonist, and is invited to witness and experience his/her psychophysical development. This dissertation will analyze three books in the Bildungsroman genre, all of which come under the broader category of the Ethnic Bildungsroman within African American and Caribbean literature. The aim is to emphasize the fluidity of the genre by juxtaposing the traditional Bildungsroman alongside the Ethnic Bildungsroman. By analyzing characters of ethnic heritage, this dissertation proposes a diverse reading of the social and cultural aspects of the Bildungsroman. This reading will consider the construction of identity of the children in the novels, as well as interrogate the various cultural aspects that influence their growth, specifically how developmental issues may affect their adolescence. In her book Ten is the Age of Darkness: The Black Bildungsroman (1995)1 Geta Leseur asks the question, what difference does setting have on the life of the characters? Are Black children in the United States or the West Indies constricted by society's roles? How do race, color, gender, and class affect development? Often, children try to negate their blackness since it robs them of a recognizable history and a sense of who they are, and because they are, and because they are conditioned by a society that denies them recognition as individuals. The first shock comes in childhood. They envision themselves as leaders or successful human beings, but the painful 'rites of passage' introduce them to their roles in society, and they are required to perform meaningless rituals that negate their individual freedoms. One of the tasks of the novelist, therefore, is to reduce human experience to manageable 1 In Ten is the Age of Darkness: The Black Bildungsroman (1995) Geta Leseur provides an illustration of how African-American authors and English-speaking West Indies have taken the European literary tradition of the Bildungsroman and adapted it to their literary needs. After defining the Bildungsroman genre, LeSeur introduces how different circumstances like race, class, gender and oppression affect the growing up process of young black adults in a different way to their white counterparts. 1 proportions, and one of the most effective ways to do so has been to explore the growing process by writing a novel of childhood. (10) In order to address LeSeur's research questions I chose to focus on Bildungsromans that take place in radically different social and economic settings. By doing so, I have come to a clearer understanding of how the children in the novels convey a sense of ethnic identity that can be emblematic of their respective position in time within their particular process of coming of age. The novels I have chosen to focus on are: Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land (1965), Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor (2009), and Brown Girl, Brownstones (1989) by Paule Marshall. All of these novels challenge the traditional Bildungsroman genre by reformulating its characteristics. In the foreword of Manchild in the Promised Land, Brown explains the aim of his book as follows: “I want to talk about the first Northern urban generation of Negroes. I want to talk about the experiences of a misplaced generation, of a misplaced people in an extremely complex, confused society.” (xi) Brown2's autobiography was written in 1965 in the midst of the civil rights struggle in the United States. The novel tells the story of being black and being raised in a bad neighborhood but succeeding in constructing a positive identity. Although the novel is typically classified as an autobiography, I here classify it as a Bildungsroman because the novel tells the story of its narrator-protagonist Sonny, a young delinquent and problematic son, who develops into a reasonable adult once he leaves Harlem. The narrator is educated on the streets of Harlem, as well as in various reformative schools. The story is concerned with Sonny’s life as a minor criminal with his peers during the 1940s and the 1950s. Throughout his journey, he is encouraged by a few guides to seek further education away from the streets, which means outside of Harlem, where he will eventually
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