Black family (dys)function in novels by Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, & Fannie Hurst

cover image

Where to find it

Davis Library (8th floor)

Call Number
PS374.D57 C35 2003
Status
Available

Stone Center Library

Call Number
PS374.D57 C35 2003 c. 2
Status
Available

Authors, etc.

Names:

Summary

During the Harlem Renaissance, competing rhetorics of racial uplift centered upon concerns regarding class identification and the process of acculturation into American society. This book demonstrates how the practice of motherhood and the organization of household relations operated to address the pressing issues facing the black community of the early twentieth century. An exploration of such literary constructs as the tragic mulatto, the passing phenomenon, and the mammy result in a revitalized understanding of how the influences of racial intolerance, sexual oppression, and class ideology combined to provoke a model of resistant black maternity in the early modern era.

Contents

  • Acknowledgments p. ix
  • Introduction: Representational Shifts and Homemade Family Values p. 1
  • 1 Conceiving Class and Culture: A Contextual Retrospective p. 11
  • Conceiving p. 12
  • Class p. 22
  • Culture p. 30
  • 2 Revising the Victorian Maternal Ideal in Jessie Fauset's There Is Confusion p. 39
  • The Endorsement of Black Patriarchal Authority p. 42
  • Confronting the Bourgeois Sensibility p. 47
  • Revisiting the Tragic Mulatto p. 52
  • Celebrating Motherhood and Domesticity p. 61
  • Finding Narrative Closure p. 71
  • 3 Elite Rejection of Maternity in Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Passing p. 81
  • Maternal Effacement in Quicksand p. 86
  • Sexual Repression and Race Confusion in Quicksand and Passing p. 93
  • Maternity and Domestic Entrapment in Passing p. 101
  • 4 The Stereotypical Mammy in Fannie Hurst's Imitation of Life p. 111
  • The Cultural Significance of the Mammy p. 113
  • Mammy as the Liberator of the White "New Woman" p. 120
  • Passing as the Modern Black Rejection of the Mammy p. 126
  • Notes p. 139
  • Bibliography p. 157
  • Index p. 169

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