DOCSLIB.ORG

The Trope of the Orphan in African- American Novels

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Trope of the Orphan in African- American Novels “ANXIETIES OF BELONGING:” THE TROPE OF THE ORPHAN IN AFRICAN- AMERICAN NOVELS ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ______________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ________________________________________________________________________ By Christian J. Rupertus May 2018 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Roland Williams, Jr. Advisory Chair, English Department Dr. Kate Henry, English Department Dr. Joyce Joyce, English Department Dr. Nilgun Anadolu-Okur, Africology and African-American Studies Department i ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the trope of the orphan in African-American novels and analyzes the prevalence of the figurative expression in the genre over time. Alienated from and deemed illegitimate by the larger society throughout their history, African Americans have grappled with competing desires to at once belong to the nation-as- family and to simultaneously be liberated from its White supremacist underpinnings. Systematically deprived of their rightful familial and cultural inheritances from their initial arrival to the Americas, Blacks have operated out of a perpetual state of orphanhood in the United States ever since, demanding acknowledgement as equal citizens while cobbling together their own intra-racial kinship bonds. By replacing nation-as-family with race-as-family to stem the tide of oppression, African Americans endeavored to carve out protective spaces for themselves within a hostile environment. The frequent deployment of Black orphan characters in African-American novels alternately reflects and interrogates this interplay between longing and liberation, transmuting over time to foreground how the exigencies of the moment come to bear on African Americans’ collective quest to find what scholar Amy Lang calls “a home for those without a home in the nation.” In order to conduct this work, I first construct a lens through which to evaluate Black orphan characters as tropological revisions, one of the four modes of double- voiced textual relations or significations delineated by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the Signifying Monkey . This opens a field of vision from which I analyze conceptualizations of kinship, home, and their relationship with what Toni Morrison calls the “anxieties of belonging” in African-American novels. Her phrase furnishes a framework for viewing ii orphanhood as a metaphor for historical conditions that have caused African Americans to confront the absence of ancestral history, a circumstance precipitated first by their forced deportation from the continent of Africa and then concatenated by the subsequent dissolution of Black family ties through the mechanics of chattel slavery. While White American novels like Huck Finn , for instance, rehearse a desire for independence and the disavowal of familial ties in favor of formulating one’s own identity, African-American narratives function as meditations on how forced dependence sought to sever Blacks from their heritage and preclude the formulation of identity, and how Blacks could resist those dehumanizing effects. My dissertation consists of six chapters that match seminal works of African- American literature with the tenor of the times around their publication date; thereby, it plots points of intersection between historical exigencies and cultural enterprises personified in the literary tradition. Opening with the narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, this investigation authenticates the parameters and topographies of the trope of the orphan that recur in subsequent African-American novels, including those that are the focus of my work: Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends (1857); Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892); Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929); Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979); and Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle (1996). By identifying characters in the given novels as instances or inflections of the trope of the orphan and its evolution over time, I demonstrate that historical conditions have rendered orphanhood a powerful symbol for the Black experience in American society, one that has come to stand for the cultural, political, and nationalistic anxieties. In plotting the coordinates of these tensions through the use of Black orphan characters, African- iii American novels destabilize fixed notions of identity. Moreover, they chart a course for attaining an authentic sense of belonging by cobbling together both intra- and inter-racial communities predicated on the acknowledgement of the full humanity of the orphaned character, and by extension, of African Americans as a whole. iv INTRODUCTION ANXIETIES OF BELONGING Orphan figures pervade African-American literature. From the tradition’s roots in antebellum autobiographical narratives, written by enslaved people, to contemporary novels, which chronicle the Black experience, the African-American orphan is a recurrent motif throughout the canon, thematically linking time periods and genres. Authors invoke the trope because of its multiple valences. The orphan lacks both home and family, and as a result, is left vulnerable to an often hostile world. The orphan’s pursuit of a sanctuary from that hostility becomes his or her means of achieving the overarching goal: to soothe anxieties of belonging. African-American literature has accorded the orphan a special place among its most valued figures and metaphors, because the orphan, disjoined from both heritage and haven, mirrors the collective history of the race. African Americans have existed in an orphan-like state in America over the course of the last four-hundred years. Forcibly separated from family and homeland and shipped to North America in chains, African Americans as a group became veritable orphans who felt the insatiable pangs of loss associated with these disjunctures. Neither the abolition of slavery nor the passage of civil rights acts a century after served to eliminate those anxieties of belonging, so it only follows that that the African- American novelistic tradition has continued to deploy the orphan figure to explore the various ways in which a people whose claims to “legitimacy, authenticity, community, and belonging” (Morrison “Home” 5) have been perpetually in doubt. The trope of the African-American orphan is what scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. calls a “tropological revision,” one of his four modes of double-voiced textual relations or significations. To v paraphrase the scholar, the type of modification at issue is a trope repeated with a difference across multiple texts. As Gates claims, the recurrent motif of “signifyin(g)” in African American literature “is the Black trope of tropes, the figure for Black rhetorical figures” (51). The trope of the orphan is a prime manifestation of signifyin(g), one that not only repeats with a difference the features of orphan characters depicted in White American literature, but also reappears within the African-American literary tradition across time periods in response to the changing exigencies of Black life in the United States. This dissertation shows that the trope of the orphan is a major recurrent theme in African-American novels, evolving from classic slave narratives, showing the discrete “anxieties of belonging” experienced by African Americans over the course of their collective experiences in America. Moreover, this study demonstrates that the orphan as a figure of speech in African-American novels has undergone several transmutations. In its nascent phase during the antebellum era, the trope manifests itself as both literal and figurative; orphaned Black characters live out the deleterious impact of parental loss and symbolize the cultural disjuncture wrought by the institution of slavery. Later, it mutates into a post-Reconstruction reflection of the modes of response by the African-American populace to the mechanisms of White supremacy and Jim Crow terrorism at the turn of the twentieth century. And finally, it transmutes into a critique of the reductive, fixed notions of identity that can come to bear on the Black orphan’s desire to be adopted into a family and secure what scholar Amy Lang calls “a home for those without a home in the nation” (43) in the broader American society of the mid- to late-twentieth century. vi At its most elemental level, the state of orphanhood is determined by loss. However, pinning down a precise definition of the term “orphan” can be problematic. It has a multiplicity of meanings in different cultural and historical contexts. Cheryl Nixon supplies a useful interpretation in light of her observation that “in literature, the term ‘orphan’ is often used loosely, encompassing many types of children: the unfortunate child victimized by death, the child sent away from the biological family to live with others, the abandoned child left to his or her own devices, the foundling taken in by a replacement family or institution, and the illegitimate child marked by bastardy” (5). Nixon argues, “The orphan must not only take control of his or her life, but must take control of his or her story” (15), laying the grounds for witnessing an inextricable concern with self-determination in African-American novels. Nixon places the need to take control at the heart of a child without parents. Her idea validates the implication by Houston A. Baker that Black writers have written themselves and their
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2006 Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction Miya G. Abbot University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Abbot, Miya G., "Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2006. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/1487 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Miya G. Abbot entitled "Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of , with a major in English. Miriam Thaggert, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Mary Jo Reiff, Janet Atwill Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Miya G.
    [Show full text]
  • EARLY MODERN WOMEN WRITERS and HUMILITY AS RHETORIC: AEMILIA LANYER's TABLE-TURNING USE of MODESTY Thesis Submitted to the Co
    EARLY MODERN WOMEN WRITERS AND HUMILITY AS RHETORIC: AEMILIA LANYER’S TABLE-TURNING USE OF MODESTY Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in English By Kathryn L. Sandy-Smith UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON Dayton, Ohio August 2013 EARLY MODERN WOMEN WRITERS AND HUMILITY AS RHETORIC: AEMILIA LANYER’S TABLE-TURNING USE OF MODESTY Name: Sandy-Smith, Kathryn Louise APPROVED BY: ________________________ Elizabeth Ann Mackay, Ph.D. Committee Co-chair ________________________ Sheila Hassell Hughes, Ph.D. Committee Member __________________________ Rebecca Potter, Ph.D. Committee Co-chair ii ABSTRACT EARLY MODERN WOMEN WRITERS AND HUMILITY AS RHETORIC: AEMILIA LANYER’S TABLE-TURNING USE OF MODESTY Name: Sandy-Smith, Kathryn L. University of Dayton Advisor: Elizabeth Mackay, Ph.D. 16th and 17th century women’s writing contains a pervasive language of self-effacement, which has been documented and analyzed by scholars, but the focus remains on the sincerity of the act, even though humility was often employed as a successful rhetorical tool by both classic orators and Renaissance male writers. Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum has been read in this tradition of sincere humility, and even when it has not, scholars have focused on the dedicatory paratext, thus minimizing Lanyer’s poetic prowess. I argue that Lanyer’s poem-proper employs modesty as a strategic rhetorical device, giving added credibility and importance to her work. By removing the lens of modesty as sincerity, I hope to encourage a reexamination of the texts of Renaissance women and remove them from their ‘silent, chaste and obedient’ allocation by/for the modern reader.
    [Show full text]
  • Doctor Strange Comics As Post-Fantasy
    Evolving a Genre: Doctor Strange Comics as Post-Fantasy Jessie L. Rogers Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Karen Swenson, Chair Nancy A. Metz Katrina M. Powell April 15, 2019 Blacksburg, Virginia Keywords: Fantasy, Comics Studies, Postmodernism, Post-Fantasy Copyright 2019, Jessie L. Rogers Evolving a Genre: Doctor Strange Comics as Post-Fantasy Jessie L. Rogers (ABSTRACT) This thesis demonstrates that Doctor Strange comics incorporate established tropes of the fantastic canon while also incorporating postmodern techniques that modernize the genre. Strange’s debut series, Strange Tales, begins this development of stylistic changes, but it still relies heavily on standard uses of the fantastic. The 2015 series, Doctor Strange, builds on the evolution of the fantastic apparent in its predecessor while evidencing an even stronger presence of the postmodern. Such use of postmodern strategies disrupts the suspension of disbelief on which popular fantasy often relies. To show this disruption and its effects, this thesis examines Strange Tales and Doctor Strange (2015) as they relate to the fantastic cornerstones of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It begins by defining the genre of fantasy and the tenets of postmodernism, then it combines these definitions to explain the new genre of postmodern fantasy, or post-fantasy, which Doctor Strange comics develop. To show how these comics evolve the fantasy genre through applications of postmodernism, this thesis examines their use of otherworldliness and supernaturalism, as well as their characterization and narrative strategies, examining how these facets subvert our expectations of fantasy texts.
    [Show full text]
  • Continuity in Color: the Persistence of Symbolic Meaning in Myths, Tales, and Tropes
    Georgia Southern University Digital Commons@Georgia Southern University Honors Program Theses 2016 Continuity in Color: The eP rsistence of Symbolic Meaning in Myths, Tales, and Tropes McKinley May Georgia Southern University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation May, McKinley, "Continuity in Color: The eP rsistence of Symbolic Meaning in Myths, Tales, and Tropes" (2016). University Honors Program Theses. 170. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/honors-theses/170 This thesis (open access) is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Honors Program Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Continuity in Color: The Persistence of Symbolic Meaning in Myths, Tales, and Tropes An Honors Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Department of Literature and Philosophy. By McKinley May Under the mentorship of Joe Pellegrino ABSTRACT This paper examines the symbolism of the colors black, white, and red from ancient times to modern. It explores ancient myths, the Grimm canon of fairy tales, and modern film and television tropes in order to establish the continuity of certain symbolisms through time. In regards to the fairy tales, the examination focuses solely on the lesser-known stories, due to the large amounts of scholarship surrounding the “popular” tales. The continuity of interpretation of these three major colors (black, white, and red) establishes the link between the past and the present and demonstrates the influence of older myths and beliefs on modern understandings of the colors.
    [Show full text]
  • Our Kind of People: Social Status and Class Awareness in Post -Reconstruction African American Fiction
    OUR KIND OF PEOPLE: SOCIAL STATUS AND CLASS AWARENESS IN POST -RECONSTRUCTION AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION Andreá N. Williams A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English Chapel Hill 2006 Approved by Advisor: William L. Andrews Reader: James W. Coleman Reader: Philip F. Gura Reader: Trudier Harris Reader: Jane F. Thrailkill © 2006 Andreá N. Williams ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ANDREÁ N. WILLIAMS: Our Kind of People: Social Status and Class Awareness in Post -Reconstruction African American Fiction (Under the dir ection of William L. Andrews) Postbellum African American fiction provides an index to the complex attitudes toward social status and class divisions that arose within post -Civil War black communities. As I argue, African American narratives in the last quarter of the nineteenth century encode the discourse of class in discussions of respectability, labor, and discrimination. Conceiving of class as a concept that does not necessarily denote economic conditions, both well -known and largely ignored narrativ es of the period emphasize moral and ideological parameters for judging social distinctions. Writers theorize whether intraracial class stratification thwarts black sociopolitical advancement, fracturing black communities from within, or conversely, foster s racial uplift led by the black “better class.” Though the fiction variably delineates social classes, each of the texts under study in Our Kind of People imagines classification as an inevitable and useful means of reforming the turn -of-the-century Ameri can social order. Subverting the class disparity spurred by Gilded Age materialism, Frances E.
    [Show full text]
  • Female Anti-Heroes in Contemporary Literature, Film, and Television Sara A
    Eastern Illinois University The Keep Masters Theses Student Theses & Publications 2016 Female Anti-Heroes in Contemporary Literature, Film, and Television Sara A. Amato Eastern Illinois University This research is a product of the graduate program in English at Eastern Illinois University. Find out more about the program. Recommended Citation Amato, Sara A., "Female Anti-Heroes in Contemporary Literature, Film, and Television" (2016). Masters Theses. 2481. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/2481 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses & Publications at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Graduate School� f.AsTE�ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY" Thesis Maintenance and Reproduction Certificate FOR: Graduate Candidates Completing Theses in Partial Fulfillment of the Degree Graduate Faculty Advisors Directing the Theses RE: Preservation, Reproduction, andDistribution of Thesis Research Preserving, reproducing, and distributing thesis research is an important part of Booth Library's responsibility to provide access to scholarship. In order to further this goal, Booth Library makes all graduate theses completed as part of a degree program at Eastern Illinois University available for personal study, research, and other not-for-profit educational purposes. Under 17 U.S.C. § 108, the library may reproduce and distribute a copy without infringing on copyright; however, professional courtesy dictates that permission be requested from the author before doing so. Your signatures affirm the following: • The graduate candidate is the author of this thesis. • The graduate candidate retains the copyright and intellectual property rights associated with the original research, creative activity, and intellectual or artistic content of the thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • Music and the Construction of Historical Narrative in 20Th and 21St Century African-American Literature
    1 Orientations in Time: Music and the Construction of Historical Narrative in 20th and 21st Century African-American Literature Leisl Sackschewsky A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2016 Reading Committee: Sonnet Retman, Chair Habiba Ibrahim Alys Weinbaum Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English 2 © Copyright 2016 Leisl Sackschewsky 3 University of Washington Abstract Orientations in Time: Music and the Construction of Historical Narrative in 20th and 21st Century African-American Literature Chair of Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Sonnet Retman American Ethnic Studies This dissertation argues that the intersections between African-American literature and music have been influential in both the development of hip-hop aesthetics and, specifically, their communication of historical narrative. Challenging hip-hop historiographers that narrate the movement as the materialization of a “phantom aesthetic”, or a sociological, cultural, technological, and musical innovation of the last forty years, this dissertation asserts that hip-hop artists deploy distinctly literary techniques in their attempts to animate, write, rewrite, rupture, or reclaim the past for the present. Through an analysis of 20th and 21st century African-American literary engagements with black music, musical figures, scenes of musical performance, and what I call ‘musical-oral’, I hope to demonstrate how prose representations of music disrupt the linear narratives of
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking Mimesis
    Rethinking Mimesis Rethinking Mimesis: Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation Edited by Saija Isomaa, Sari Kivistö, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Sanna Nyqvist, Merja Polvinen and Riikka Rossi Rethinking Mimesis: Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation, Edited by Saija Isomaa, Sari Kivistö, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Sanna Nyqvist, Merja Polvinen and Riikka Rossi Layout: Jari Käkelä This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Saija Isomaa, Sari Kivistö, Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Sanna Nyqvist, Merja Polvinen and Riikka Rossi and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3901-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3901-3 Table of ConTenTs Introduction: Rethinking Mimesis The Editors...........................................................................................vii I Concepts of Mimesis Aristotelian Mimesis between Theory and Practice Stephen Halliwell....................................................................................3 Rethinking Aristotle’s poiêtikê technê Humberto Brito.....................................................................................25 Paul Ricœur and
    [Show full text]
  • The Constitutive Relationship Between Race and Disability
    THE CONSTITUTIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RACE AND DISABILITY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: A BLACK CRITICAL DISABILITIES STUDIES APPROACH by DELIA D. STEVERSON TRUDIER HARRIS, COMMITTEE CHAIR NIRMALA EREVELLES CASSANDER L. SMITH PHILIP BEIDLER YOLANDA MANORA A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2017 Copyright Delia D. Steverson 2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT In this project, I examine what disability scholars such as Ellen Samuels, Nirmala Erevelles, and Cynthia Wu label as the “constitutive relationship” between race and disability, meaning that race informs disability in the same way that disability informs race. The relationship between the two categories of difference is interconnected, yet seldom does black literary studies engage a disability studies praxis and rarely does disability studies engage with African American literature. I formulate a theory of reading race and disability as it pertains to the fiction, authors, and the larger African American and disability communities and strive to reconcile the overlooked, yet imperative, relationship between the two categories of difference. By using a Black Critical Disabilities Studies Approach, as I label it, my project breaks down the ways in which African American authors and scholars use disability as a metaphor for race, usually carrying a negative connotation. Not only do I engage the rhetorical strategies of disability in African American literature and scholarship, but I also employ a historical materialist lens to explore how, through the brutal system of slavery, the black body becomes the epitome of the disabled figure.
    [Show full text]
  • Harriet E. Wilson's Our
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE HARRIET E. WILSON’S OUR NIG: A TRIAL FOR WRITING “MY OWN STORY” II Keiko Noguchi I. Neither of the two key elements of the domestic novel, marriage and home, is given to the heroine of Our Nig. The “true womanhood” with its emphasis on piety, purity, obedience, and domesticity1 is either unavailable to, or unable to support, a black woman in a patriarchal racist society based on slavery rules. The problem, then, focuses on the way how the heroine establishes herself in such a hostile society. One of the cheif themes of the story, in fact, lies in Frado’s struggle to acquire independence. According to Harryette Mullen, nineteenth- century black women writers strived to incorporate “an oral tradition of resistance” into their literature, since the two traditional literary forms available to them, the male slave narrative and the white female sentimental fiction, are inadequate to express their experience (245). They assert oral power of black women to resist the oppressors and to insist upon their selfhood, while male writers of slave narratives underscore the physical power to attain manhood as Douglass does in the scene of his fight with Mr. Covey. When submission and self-effacement were endorsed as female virtues, black women resorted to “orality”—talking back, arguing, or revealing secrets of their masters, all of which were regarded as “saucy” or “impudent” by the ruling class—to surface their voice and thereby to establish their identity (Mullen 245-46)2. II.
    [Show full text]
  • By DECEMBER 2015
    A Thesis entitled Post Soul Poetics: Form and Structure in Paul Beatty's The White Boy Sltuffle by LaVelle Q. Ridley as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honors in English Thesis Director: Dr. Kimberly Mack Honors Dr. Melissa Valiska Gregory The University of Toledo DECEMBER 2015 Abstract Nelson George's notion of the post-soul aesthetic--defined as the artistic vision of black artists who come of age after the Civil Rights and Black Power/Arts Movements of the 1960s and 70s--provides many African American writers and scholm's with a vehicle for critically examining contemporary African American literature and culture. In his 1996 debut novel The Whtte Boy Shuffle, poet Paul Beatty parodies and examines many spheres of contemporary black culture, among them the fagade of"white" multiculturalism, the queerness of black masculinity, and the globalization of black popular culture. I argue that the formal structure of the novel replicates Beatty's exploration and subversion of post-soul discourses on blaclcness. By simultaneously rejecting yet worldng within the category of"post-soul," The White Boy Shuffle evinces a post-soul sensibility that maintains the fluidity and playfulness inherent to the post-soul generation, illustrating Greg Tate's definition of post-soul as the "African American equivalent to postmodernism." Through the protagonist Gunnar I(aufman, a young black poet, I believe that the novel's form prioritizes poetry, which disrupts the fictional gem-e. Also, by employing particular racial nomenclature and consistent querying from Gunnar which satirizes past racial discourses, the novel signifies on the timeline of "America's never-ending discussion of race" and brings them forward for the post-soul generation to examine.
    [Show full text]
  • Identity Shift in Paul Beatty's the White Boy Shuffle
    IDENTITY SHIFT IN PAUL BEATTY'S THE WHITE BOY SHUFFLE D. ABINAYA Research Scholar Research Department of English The American College Madurai – 625 002 (TN) INDIA. Paul Beatty is an African American novelist and who is the first American to get the Man Booker prize 2016. His works are highly satirical. The White Boy Shuffle is his debut novel. As an African American, he portraits images of slavery, loss of identity, race and racial barriers in his novel. His protagonist Gunnar, who is a poet, is in a dilemma throughout the novel. There are many controversies in his life. He appears to be a man of mixed identity and he is often transforms between his identities. The objective of the paper is to project the exhaustion of a pure identity and the emergence of a new corrupted identity. The research tool employed is the concept of ‘hibridity’. Keywords: Culture, identity, hybridity, imitation, and race. INTRODUCTION The literature of every society is marked by its own problems which are unique and peculiar and so cannot be ignored. African American literature is dominated by African’s encounter with the west and its consequences. The African American social, political and economic history has contributed a lot to the making of African American literature. With its peculiar history of racial segregation and its impact on the culture, political and psychological situation, African American Literature mostly presents to the reader, the hostility that existed between the world of Whites and Blacks. In the post colonial context, the novel ceases to be the literary artifact. Post colonial literature addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of the country and of a nation, especially the political independence of formerly subjugated colonial people.
    [Show full text]