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Writing, Recuperating, and Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway

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Writing, Recuperating, and Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway CALIFORNIA ST ATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS THESIS SIGNATURE PAGE THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE AND WRITING THESIS TITLE: From Girls to Women: (Re)Writing, Recuperating, and Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway AUTHOR: Nicole Genne Corrigan DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: April 25, 2017 THE THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF TI-IE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE AND WRITING. Dr. Catherine Cucinella ~~ oJ/l:is/2017 THESIS COMMITTEE CHAIR SIGNATURE D/(TE' Dr. Yuan Yuan THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER SIGNATURE Dr. Susie Lan Cassel THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER Master of Arts in Literature and Writing Thesis From Girls to Women: (Re)Writing, Recuperating, Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway Committee: Dr. Catherine Cucinella, Dr. Yuan Yuan, Dr. Susie Lan Cassel California State University San Marcos April 25, 2017 Nicole Genné Corrigan 1 Table of Contents From Girls to Women: (Re)Writing, Recuperating, Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway .................................. 1 Introduction: From Girls to Women: (Re)Writing, Recuperating, Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway.............................................................................................................. 3 (Re)Writing the Tragic Mulatto: Excavating the BlackandWhite Biracial Woman in Passing .............................................................................................................................. 19 (Re)Writing Pathologies: Upending the Tragic Mulatto in The Bluest Eye ..................... 37 Recuperating and Resuscitating: (Re)Claiming the Biracial Figure and Black Female Subjectivity ....................................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion: From Girls to Woman: (Re)Writing, Recuperating, Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway ......................................................................................................................... 94 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 101 2 Introduction: From Girls to Women: (Re)Writing, Recuperating, Resuscitating Biracialism in the Works of Nella Larsen, Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and Natasha Tretheway As I write these words, Rachel Dolezal’s story has already simmered into a book deal that many find unfair, as her book deal would allow her to profit from an extreme form of racial appropriation. Dolezal’s story, a story that threw the country into a state of confusion and a fit of comedic internet memes, unfolded when her parents went on national television to state that their white daughter had been passing for black. To some people, Dolezal was just outright crazy, and some people applauded Dolezal for the uplifting work she was doing in the black community. But mostly people were just flat-out confused as to why a white woman would seemingly throw away her white privilege—privilege, as in something that garners unearned luxury, treatment, and/or opportunity—to pass as black. And to many people, Dolezal was that white woman, who had used her white privilege to misrepresent the black experience. These were the people who claimed that Dolezal had crossed the line with her exaggerated forms of racial appropriation. Altogether, her story, her ability to pass as black and our ability to perceive her as black, garnered reactions that allowed audiences to think deeply about definitions of race. I would like to capitalize on this reaction and ask us to continue that train of deep and profound thinking as it pertains to the ways in which we think about and perceive race, the categories of race, as well as racial ambiguity. When we think about our perceptions regarding race, we see that the categories of race are rather rigid; in fact, these categories are so rigid that all Dolezal had to do to be perceived as black was adorn herself in a few of the racial signifiers that society normalizes as synonymous with black. However, the fact that Dolezal, a white woman, could easily pass as a racially ambiguous, or biracial, black woman proves the ways in which racial classifications are both 3 arbitrarily and socially constructed. If we turn our attention to African American literature, this narrative of passing is largely at play. However, this “passing” narrative is not reminiscent of Dolezal’s lived life (a white woman functioning in structures of white supremacy who chose to pass as black), but instead focuses on the racially-plural woman who can pass for white, and as a means of securing upward mobility that was denied to black people in a white supremacist society, does pass for white. Racially-plural women have been pathologically locked into a tragic mulatto literary trope that is still, to this day, ingrained in representations of the racially- plural/ambiguous biracial woman. In African American literature, many of the biracial figures, whether intended or not, work to deconstruct the image of the tragic mulatto and these figures ultimately render alternative ways of thinking about race and the ways in which racial identification contributes to individual subjectivity. Although there are several male characters misconstrued as tragic mulatto, the tragic trope seemed to originate with biracial cis-women “mulatto1” characters. For this reason, I focus my study on the blackandwhite biracial woman character and examine how this particular narrative of biracialism, whether intentional or not, ultimately works to deconstruct the distorted tragic mulatto image. In doing so, I explore the ways in which these narratives of biracialism contribute to and complicate black diversity within African American literature. Within this focus, I present race as a social construct produced by the arbitrary and unreliable gaze. Through this unreliable gaze, racial identities, such as the tragic mulatto trope, are constructed and projected onto the individual. I argue that the deconstruction of the tragic mulatto reveals the trope as both a projection and a symptom of a white supremacist system; in this way, the deconstruction of the tragic mulatto is also a deconstruction of and a resistance to 1 The term “mulatto” carries a lot of baggage. For the purposes of this paper, the use of the word “mulatto” is employed as a direct reference to the tragic mulatto trope. 4 the any facets of white supremacy. If we are to widen our scope of deconstructing and/or upending tropes, or stereotypes, like that of the tragic mulatto, ekphrasis should be considered as a tool of deconstruction, a tool of upending, for it is the ekphrastic process that not only allows us to deconstruct old, archaic, and essentializing tropes but also allows us to acknowledge black diversity and reclaim histories lost to erasure. I further argue that a cerebral-corporeal, or embodied, subjectivity proliferates and informs our understanding when it concerns black female subjectivities. However, to begin this discussion, we must first look at the construction of race in the United States of America and its impact on biracial women of color. During the early to mid-1900s, there were a few different theories that helped construct notions of race. On the one hand, there was the biologist’s theory, and on the other, there was the culturalist theory. The biological theorists defined race as something that was visibly marked onto the body—it was physical. For the biologist, race could be determined by the physical characteristics of one’s body, and race was not only biological but also was perceived as that which determined the character, language, morality, psychology, and intelligence of an individual. Race then was intrinsically linked to the biological make-up of an individual. As biologist thinkers would have it, race was something that could be tested. According to the culturalist’s theory, however, the physical characteristics of an individual’s body varied from one person to the next, and these discrepancies were evidence that race could not be scientifically, or biologically, determined. With these discrepancies, the culturalists asserted that “physical characteristics were completely unreliable indicators of race” (Pascoe 189). Racial signifiers, such as skin color and hair type, were social constructions that aligned with popular belief. The culturalists concluded that these signifiers were unreliable in defining the race of an individual. 5 And then there was a split in culturalist thought. Each type of culturalist asserted that character, morality, psychology, and language were, in fact, cultural in that these facets of life were learned and not biological. However, the new culturalist thought believed the physical characteristics of an individual could be explained by race and that “‘racial differences’ occurred only in ‘nonessentials such as texture of head hair, amount of body hair, shape of the nose or head, or color of the eyes and the skin’” (Pascoe 189). For the new culturalist, race was, yet again, defined as something that was biologically determined. Eugenicists
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