The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2011 The Black Plumb Line: Re-evaluating Race and Africanist Images in Non-Black Authored American Texts LaShondra Vanessa Robinson University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Recommended Citation Robinson, LaShondra Vanessa, "The Black Plumb Line: Re-evaluating Race and Africanist Images in Non- Black Authored American Texts" (2011). Dissertations. 663. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/663 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi THE BLACK PLUMB LINE: RE-EVALUATING RACE AND AFRICANIST IMAGES IN NON-BLACK AUTHORED AMERICAN TEXTS by LaShondra Vanessa Robinson Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2011 ABSTRACT THE BLACK PLUMB LINE: RE-EVALUATING RACE AND AFRICANIST IMAGES IN NON-BLACK AUTHORED AMERICAN TEXTS by LaShondra Vanessa Robinson August 2011 This study evaluates Africanisms (representations of racialized or ethnicized blackness) within three contemporary non-black authors’ texts: Jewish American Saul Bellow’s novel Henderson the Rain King, white southerner Melinda Haynes’ novel Mother of Pearl, and Nyurican poet Victor Hernández Cruz’s works “Mesa Blanca” and “White Table.” Though not entirely unproblematic, each selection somehow redefines black identity and agency to challenge denigrated representations of Africanist people and culture. In the process, each author subverts faulty components of American myths of racial purity, particularly stratifying black-white dualisms that promote whiteness, racial supremacy, and resulting undue privilege. This study also traces how Bellow, Haynes and Cruz adopt and/or adapt rhetorical strategies, mutual investments in history and shared identity cues that align these writers and their works with aspects of the African American literary tradition as well as kindred authors of African descent. Racial performance and the social construction of identity factor heavily into this project as the chosen writers also challenge critical tendencies to equate authors’ identities with authors’ aims, particularly when writers cross identity boundaries to dismantle traditional patterns of racial supremacy and racism. The ambiguously raced author Jean Toomer and ii fellow writer Carl Van Vechten also serve as key introductory comparative figures within this study. Ultimately, this project underscores the continued responsibility American writers have to address the cultural artifact American imaginations have made of racialized blackness within our national literature and corresponding social spaces and institutions. iii COPYRIGHT BY LASHONDRA VANESSA ROBINSON 2011 The University of Southern Mississippi THE BLACK PLUMB LINE: RE-EVALUATING RACE AND AFRICANIST IMAGES IN NON-BLACK AUTHORED AMERICAN TEXTS by LaShondra Vanessa Robinson A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: Linda Allen ____________________________________ Director Jonathan Barron ____________________________________ Luis Iglesias ____________________________________ Sherita Johnson ____________________________________ Martina Sciolino ____________________________________ Susan A. Siltanen ____________________________________ Dean of the Graduate School August 2011 DEDICATION To my family elders and mentors—your accomplishments would have been much greater than mine if you had simply been born to a different era. Your wise words, unfulfilled dreams, and well-read books have fueled my life with a thirst for knowledge and righteousness. Thank you. This work is dedicated in memory of the late Minister Ann M. Houston, Reverend Leroy Boykin, and Minister Ora Jefferson. I also dedicate this work to Dorothy Smith, educator par excellence and woman of great dignity and purpose. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge you, Dr. Linda Allen, for your service as my committee chair through the final year of my writing process. Your enthusiasm and positivity have been invaluable. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Jonathan Barron, Dr. Sherita Johnson, Dr. Martina Sciolino, and Dr. Luis Iglesias—thank all of you for your contributions as committee members. Dr. Barron, I admire your genuine passion for scholarship. Thank you for your professional example, consistent support, and honesty. Dr. Johnson, I thank you as well for your prophetic act of setting time aside. Dr. Michael Mays and Dr. Mary A. Villeponteaux, I would like to acknowledge you both for your vital assistance at multiple points along my lengthy path toward completing this project. I also owe special recognition to you, Dr. Ellen Weinauer. Thank you for your administrative support and intervention during a critical point when all seemed lost. I also owe a special note of gratitude to you, Melinda Haynes. Thank you for granting me an interview. Your contribution to my research has enriched my project more than you could know. Strength and continued blessings to you. (And yes, you were right. I did finish.) I would also like to acknowledge you, Maurice Gandy, for sharing your southern writer’s connections. I would also like to acknowledge F. Odun Balogun. Thank you for sharing your article (and for such speedy mailing). My Bishop State Community College family, thank all of you for your never-ending encouragement and wonderfully annoying anticipation. I especially thank you, the late Dr. Keflyn X. Reed, for the many juggling feats you performed through odd semester schedules and delays. Perhaps you will read this one day and tell me what you think. Enjoy your rest. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: REIMAGINING BLACKNESS ..................................1 II. THE VISIBLE MAN: THE UNDOING OF WHITENESS IN SAUL BELLOW’S HENDERSON THE RAIN KING ...............................26 III. BLACKNESS AND SAUL BELLOW’S AMERICAN AFRICA ............70 IV. RE-MEMBERING EMMETT: LYNCH IMAGERY AND RACIAL IDENTITY IN MELINDA HAYNES’ MOTHER OF PEARL ......................................................................................................110 Haynes’ Manipulation of Historical Context Haynes and Southern Literary Traditions Lynching, Black Manhood, and Africanist Community Destruction of the White Patriarch Subversion of Southern White Womanhood A Revisionary Black Southern Patriarch and Fatherhood V. DWELLING PLACES: AFRICANISMS AND LATINO IDENTITY IN VICTOR HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ’S “WHITE TABLE” AND “MESA BLANCA” .................................................................................159 Cruz’s Performance of Blackness in Callaloo ’s “White Table” Puerto Rican Identity and the “Mesa Blanca” of Panoramas Conflations of Language and Race in the Earlier Spanish Empire Language, Music, and Universal Latino Identity in Paper Dance Cruz’s Panoramas VI. CONCLUSION: RENDER UNTO CAESAR WHAT HE IS DUE ........214 APPENDIX ......................................................................................................................242 NOTES .............................................................................................................................267 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................304 vi 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: REIMAGINING BLACKNESS “Every literature must seek the things that belong unto its peace, must, in other words, speak of a particular place, evolve out of the necessities of its history, past and current, and the aspirations and destiny of its people”—Chinua Achebe, “Colonialist Criticism” Jean Toomer had long passed into white America when the 1960s-1970s Black Arts Movement summoned him back into the racial fold. He would become a valued literary statesman alongside the likes of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Sterling Brown, among Others. Ironically, only after African American scholars had rediscovered Toomer’s multi-genre work Cane did more recent scholarship place Toomer alongside non-black modernists Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Sherwood Anderson, and T. S Eliot, to name a few. The writer’s preferred literary relations settled him more resolutely among these Caucasian modernist peers than among African American Harlem Renaissance writers with whom scholars most often group Toomer (Gutterl 172). Another irony, Toomer’s greatest reception within this same preferred modernist community was also contingent upon his status as a Negro and ethnic commodity. His timing threw him into a popularity surge in primitive art,