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Materiality and Masculinity in African American Literature. (2014) Directed by Dr GIBSON, SCOTT THOMAS, Ph.D. Heavy Things: Materiality and Masculinity in African American Literature. (2014) Directed by Dr. SallyAnn H. Ferguson. 222 pp. Heavy Things illustrates how African American writers redefine black manhood through metaphors of heaviness, figured primarily through their representation of material objects. Taking the literal and figurative weight the narrator’s briefcase in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as a starting point, this dissertation examines literary representations of material objects, including gifts, toys, keepsakes, historical documents, statues, and souvenirs as modes of critiquing the materialist foundations of manhood in the United States. Historically, materialism has facilitated white male domination over black men by associating property ownership with both whiteness and manhood. These writers not only reject materialism as a vehicle of oppression but also reveal alternative paths along which black men can thrive in a hostile American society. Each chapter of my analysis is structured around specific kinds of “heavy” objects—gifts, artifacts, and memorials—that liberate black men from white definitions of manhood based in possessive materialism. In Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, gifts reestablished ties between alienated black men and their communities. In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and John Edgar Wideman’s Fatheralong, black sons attempt to reconcile their fraught relationships with their fathers through the recovery of historical artifacts. In Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days and Emily Raboteau’s The Professor’s Daughter, black men and women use commemorative objects such as monuments and memorials to reimagine black male abjection as a trope of healing. Finally, my conclusion applies my analysis of material objects in literature to recent representations of Trayvon Martin’s hoodie to understand how material objects operate as metaphors of black manhood in contemporary American popular culture. HEAVY THINGS: MATERIALITY AND MASCULINITY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE by Scott Thomas Gibson A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2014 Approved by ______________________________ Committee Chair © 2014 Scott Thomas Gibson For Cristina, for everything. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair __________________________________ SallyAnn H. Ferguson Committee Members __________________________________ Hephzibah Roskelly __________________________________ María Carla Sánchez ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee __________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Some say it takes a village to raise a child, but in my case, it took a virtual army to write a dissertation. My committee members, SallyAnn Ferguson, María Sánchez, and Hephzibah Roskelly have been immensely supportive and inexplicably patient. I am especially thankful to Professor Ferguson, who asked me when I walked into her Charles W. Chesnutt seminar several years ago whether I was ready for a challenge. I said yes then, and I hope that I have lived up to it. Several other colleagues have guided my thinking and writing since the inception of this work. I am grateful to my Tate Street comrades, Cheryl Marsh, Alan Benson, Craig Morehead, Rose Brister, and Matt Mullins. I have also been fortunate to have many gracious readers along the way Cindy Webb, Tina Romanelli, Daniel Burns, Erin Wedehase and Andrew Pisano – thank you. I am also indebted to Noelle Morrissette for lending her expertise and encouragement several times during the past two years. Members of my family have been unwavering in their support. Thank you mom, Scott, Aunt Sue, Eduardo, Guadalupe, and our honorary family members, Mylene and Andy. I am also indebted to my grandmother, Nancy Rundle, who passed away in April 2010. Her passing reminded me exactly how much I depended on her for strength. She was tough as nails, and I hope that I have inherited some of her fortitude. Finally, I could never have completed this project without Cristina. I am thankful that she agreed to take this voyage with me seven years ago, and for being the best companion imaginable along the way. I know the same cannot be said of me; earning a iv PhD is mostly a selfish endeavor. I intend to repay my debt in our domestic currency of foot rubs and home-cooked meals. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING THE INVISIBLE MAN’S BRIEFCASE ......................................................................................................1 Materialism and the Self-Made Man ...........................................................6 Why Materiality? .......................................................................................13 Heavy Things .............................................................................................16 Critical Overview .......................................................................................24 Chapter Outline ..........................................................................................30 Notes ..........................................................................................................34 II. THE SPIRIT OF GIVING: GIFT EXCHANGE IN FREDERICK DOUGLASS’S NARRATIVE AND ERNEST J. GAINES’S A LESSON BEFORE DYING ..........................................................................40 Gift Economies and Social Reciprocity .....................................................45 Sandy’s Root in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. ..................53 Gift Giving and Community in A Lesson Before Dying ............................64 Conclusion .................................................................................................81 Notes ..........................................................................................................84 III. IN SEARCH OF OUR FATHER’S BONES: RECOVERING BLACK FATHERHOOD IN TONI MORRISON’S SONG OF SOLOMON AND JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN’S FATHERALONG ..............88 Absent Fathers, Native Sons: The Sociology of Black Fatherhood ...........92 Collecting the Bones: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon .......................101 Reading the Bones: John Edgar Wideman’s Fatheralong .......................117 Conclusion ...............................................................................................129 Notes ........................................................................................................131 IV. MONUMENTAL MANHOOD: COMMEMORATION AND ABJECTION IN COLSON WHITEHEAD’S JOHN HENRY DAYS AND EMILY RABOTEAU’S THE PROFESSOR’S DAUGHTER ................................................................................................140 Visualizing the Abject: Monuments, Memorials, and Lynching Rituals ..................................................................................................144 vi Confronting Abjection in Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days...........154 Abjection and Self-Actualization in Emily Raboteau’s The Professor’s Daughter ...................................................................167 Conclusion ...............................................................................................177 Notes ........................................................................................................184 V. CONCLUSION: ARE WE ALL TRAYVON? .................................................193 Notes ........................................................................................................201 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................202 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING THE INVISIBLE MAN’S BRIEFCASE At the end of Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s unnamed narrator attempts to escape the Harlem riot provoked by fellow members of the Brotherhood. As he flees the scene, two white men armed with a baseball bat approach him and ask to see the contents of his briefcase. The initially “gleaming calfskin brief case” (32), which the narrator won for his high school graduation speech at the beginning of the novel, is now battered and filled with paraphernalia—his high school diploma, a broken leg-shackle, sunglasses, reference letters, a Sambo doll, and the pieces of a smashed, cast-iron bank—collected during his tribulations.1 As the threatening white men advance, the narrator runs away and plunges down a manhole. When the men again demand to know the contents of his briefcase, the invisible man taunts them by replying, ““You. [...] What do you think of that? […] “All of you. […] “I’ve had you in my brief case all the time and you didn’t know me then and can’t see me now.” (566). Enraged by the narrator’s provocation, the two men seal the manhole, trapping him in the darkness. At first glance, the invisible man’s briefcase and its contents are most obviously emblems of his “illusions” about rendering himself visible in a racially hostile society. From his sunglasses that alter his perception to the racist caricatures of the Sambo Doll and the smashed bank that formerly had the figure of a “very black, red-lipped and wide- mouthed Negro” (319), the briefcase is full of objects that signify deception, distortion,
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