SITES OF INSTRUCTION: EDUCATION, KINSHIP AND NATION IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE By SAMIRA ABDUR-RAHMAN A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in English Written under the direction of Cheryl Wall and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION SITES OF INSTRUCTION: EDUCATION, KINSHIP AND NATION IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE By SAMIRA ABDUR-RAHMAN Dissertation Director: Cheryl A. Wall “Sites of Instruction: Education, Kinship and Nation in African American Literature” explores education as a site of racial subjection and identity making in African American Literature and culture. Through close readings of selected narratives, I explore how writers use education to represent the navigation, and imagining, of the relationships between community, the individual and the nation. In chapter one, I explore Sutton Griggs and Frances Harper’s post-bellum narratives of education as attempts to recuperate both Southern landscapes and kinship through articulation of the black teacher as communal healer and sacrificial leader. Griggs and Harper represent scenes of instruction which engage with education as a negotiation between generations, occurring within intimate scenes of domesticity, and on larger public stages. In chapter two, I identify black teachers, and intellectuals, in flight as a symptomatic response to the constraints and contradictions of early twentieth century racial uplift ideology, with a focus on Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem. In the face of anxieties about race purity, national borders and miscegenation, Larsen and McKay center characters whose immigrant and marginal status provide alternative insights, and perspectives, that critique and challenge conservative discourses of both citizenship and ii black instruction. The third chapter focuses on the literary production of narratives about school desegregation by exploring critically neglected civil rights fiction by Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis. Shange’s Betsey Brown and Davis’s 1959 articulate the meaning of desegregation through an exploration of adolescent subjectivity and gender. The prominence of children’s voices, within civil rights fiction, suggests that children can write a different narrative of their political agency and participation in school desegregation politics, one that moves beyond both a damage thesis of black childhood and surface representations of black children’s innocence. My epilogue contemplates the meaning, and construction, of post- Civil Rights subjectivities and communities by looking at representations of educational spaces in the works of Lorene Cary, Sapphire and Andrea Lee. I ultimately conclude that fictions of education embody educational history and also propose narrative as a source of pedagogical intervention. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank Mia Bay, Abena Busia and Brad Evans for serving as my committee members. I remain appreciative of Mia’s expertise in black intellectual history and her thoughtful interventions during the project. Brad’s graduate seminar, Post Bellum/Pre Harlem, was crucial in introducing me to the literature of the period. Abena, from my undergraduate years in her Black Autobiography and African Feminisms courses, to her support of my graduate work, has been an invaluable light. My committee never lost interest in my project and, throughout the long haul of my research and writing, consistently offered their time, critical commentary and insights. I thank Cheryl Wall for serving as my Dissertation Chair, but, most profoundly, for encouraging me from my incipient days as a graduate student. I join a long line of students who are eternally grateful to Cheryl for her generosity, wisdom and care. I am indebted to Courtney Borack and Cheryl Robinson who calmed every panic with their knowledge and warmth. I thank you for answering every email and returning all the phone calls. You were both crucial to the completion of this project. To my family, Kiera, Aliyah, Bashir and Malik, The Great Debaters! You have given me laughter when it was most needed. To my first teachers, Ummi and Abbi, words cannot fully express my love and appreciation. Thank you for your love and support; without your sacrifices, this would not have been possible. To Mumin, your encouragement, love and support sustained me throughout this unruly journey. iv Table of Contents Title Page……………………………………………………………………………………. i Abstract of the Dissertation……………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….iv Introduction: Lineages of Literature and Education……………………………1 Chapter One: Structures of Sacrifice: Post-Bellum Educational Missions in Sutton E. Griggs and France E.W. Harper………………………………………………………..47 Chapter Two: ‘Intimacy with ones not Chosen’: Immigration, Education and the Estrangement of the Black Educator in Nella Larsen and Claude McKay…………………………………....................................................................96 Chapter Three: The Child who is a mirror: Civil Rights Fiction, School Desegregation and the Construction of the Dissident Child………………………………………………153 Epilogue: The Unruly Conversation of Race and Education in the Post-Civil Rights Era……………………………………………………………………………………………………207 v 1 Introduction: Lineages of Education and Literature I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the trajectory of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks One day near the end of my second term at school the principal came into our room, and after talking to the teacher, for some reason said, "I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment." I rose with the others. The teacher looked at me, and calling my name said, "You sit down for the present, and rise with the others." I did not quite understand her, and questioned, "Ma'm?" She repeated with a softer tone in her voice, "You sit down now, and rise with the others." I sat down dazed. I saw and heard nothing. When the others were asked to rise I did not know it. When school was dismissed I went out in a kind of stupor. A few of the white boys jeered me, saying, "Oh, you're a nigger too." I heard some black children say, "We knew he was colored." "Shiny" said to them, "Come along, don't tease him," and thereby won my undying gratitude. James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man In January of 2011 the media and internet began to circulate the story of the “Akron mom,” and, more specifically, the narrative of her quest to give her daughters access to, what she believed would be, a quality education. Kelley Williams-Bolar, an African-American single mother, and resident of Akron Ohio stood accused of “theft of educational services.” Williams- Bolar allegedly used her father’s address, in violation of residency requirements, in order to send her children, from 2006 to 2008, to the Copley-Fairlawn schools, a school district rated excellent by the state of Ohio. Williams-Bolar usurped a tuition fee of $800 a month per student by falsifying her residency. The major discrepancy in the case was whether Williams-Bolar’s two daughters’ primary residence was with their grandfather, who did reside in the Copley-Fairlawn district or with their mother in Akron. Williams-Bolar faced felony charges of tampering with 2 records and was initially sentenced to five years in prison. The initial sentence was eventually overturned and Williams-Bolar served nine-days of a ten day jail sentence. Subsequently, Superintendent Brian Poe explained that reports of residency violation were a routine occurrence in the district. Describing the school board as “good stewards” of “taxpayers’ dollars,” in news reports and interviews, Superintendent Poe stood by his commitment to reduce the number of non-resident students who illegally entered the district. 1 When confronted with the possible racial implications of his residency enforcement efforts, Poe explained that white families had also been targeted; out of 47 cases from 2005 to 2011, twenty-nine of them involved African-Americans, fifteen involved whites and three involved Asian-Americans. 2 In response to the controversy surrounding her case and imprisonment, Williams-Bolar was also reluctant to conclude that it was because of her race that she faced prosecution. In an interview with NPR journalist Michel Martin, Williams-Bolar, and her attorney, suggested that it was cultural, not racial, difference which fueled the conflict with the school district. She proposed that within her culture, grandparents acted as surrogate parents to their grandchildren, and, relatedly, that home for her daughters was a shifting location, with various adults acting as authority figures. 3 This amorphous understanding of location and family was expressed by Williams-Bolar in decidedly cultural terms; nevertheless, her explanation still gestures towards a racial reality, and it stands in sharp contrast