Synopses & Reviews
In the United States miscegenation is not merely a subject of literature and popular culture. It is in many ways the foundation of contemporary imaginary community. The Romance of Race examines the role of minority women writers and reformers in the creation of our modern American multiculturalism.
The national identity of the United States was transformed between 1880 and 1930 due to mass immigration, imperial expansion, the rise of Jim Crow, and the beginning of the suffrage movement. A generation of women writers and reformersandmdash;particularly women of colorandmdash;contributed to these debates by imagining new national narratives that put minorities at the center of American identity. Jane Addams, Pauline Hopkins, Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton), Marandiacute;a Cristina Mena, and Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket) embraced the images of the United Statesandmdash;and increasingly the worldandmdash;as an interracial nuclear family. They also reframed public debates through narratives depicting interracial encounters as longstanding, unacknowledged liaisons between white men and racialized women that produced an incestuous, mixed-race nation.
By mobilizing the sexual taboos of incest and miscegenation, these women writers created political allegories of kinship and community. Through their criticisms of the nationandrsquo;s history of exploitation and colonization, they also imagined a more inclusive future. As Jolie A. Sheffer identifies the contemporary template for American multiculturalism in the works of turn-of-the century minority writers, she uncovers a much more radical history than has previously been considered.
Review
andquot;Skillfully demonstrates how Jewish American women writers employ images of blackness to undermine the division between 'white' and 'black' identity. The figure of the 'White Negress' thus becomes the site for a feminist critique of whiteness.andquot;
Review
andquot;Placing gender squarely at the intersection of black-Jewish cultural imaginings, The White Negress makes a stunning contribution to our understanding of whiteness, race relations, and ethnic literature.andquot;
Review
andquot;By sustaining attention to women and fidelity to the complex and even contradictory texts,
The White Negress constitutes both a convincing critique of scholarship on minstrelsy and a fascinating literary study in its own right.andquot;
Review
"an important contribution to figurations of race in the twentieth century."
American Jewish Archives Journal
Review
andquot;This is a fine book, filled with expertly hewn close readings of a small but important group of female actors and authors, women who made significant contributions to how African Americans and Jews of European descent imagined one another.andquot;
Review
andquot;
The White Negress acts as a significant challenge to existing scholarship concerning whiteness, cross-racial performances, and black-
Jewish encounters. Although, by her own admission, Harrison-Kahanandrsquo;s book is not 'a comprehensive survey of black-Jewish relations among women' or Jewish women and blackface performance, her study is perhaps most noteworthy for its assertion that future work in these fields must take women, gender, and sexuality seriously.andquot;
Review
andquot;an important contribution to figurations of race in the twentieth century.andquot;
Review
andquot;The White Negress offers innovative approaches for understanding the shifting logics of citizenship and racial formation across the twentieth century through the work of culture.andquot;
Review
"Socolovsky considers how Latina fiction disrupts mainstream notions about what constitutes the US nation and national identity. Her arguments are particularly useful in discussing current debates about immigration and anti-immigration rhetoric, which links the illegal presence of Latin Americans in the US to threats this foreign culture poses to what is truly 'American.' Highly recommended."
Review
"A wonderful extended meditation on the ways Latina writers have imagined and narrated alternative notions of 'community' in which the United States and Latin America are interdependent extensions of each other rather than strictly bounded and mutually exclusive."
Review
"This timely and insightful book offers analyses of narratives both familiar and new depicting fruitfully disruptive Latina lives. Socolovsky's readings demonstrate that U.S. Latina literature is crucial to understanding how colonial legacies increasingly trouble the contemporary nation-state."
Review
"Socolovsky’s literary and cultural analysis is a significant contribution to the studies of Latina feminist literature, and at the same time validates the presence of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, pushing back the negative political and cultural rhetoric that is currently taking place in the public sphere."
Review
andquot;Crisply written and convincingly argued,and#160;The Romance of Raceand#160;is a sharp piece of literary and cultural analysis. I highly recommend it.andquot;
Review
andquot;A smart and important book, The Romance of Race empowers its reader to rethink the structures of the genealogy of family, nation, and race along with the pathbreaking women writers it examines.andquot;
Review
andquot;Aand#160;fine work of scholarship that highlights the social, economic, and cultural dynamism associated with the literary and historical analysis of race, gender, and sexuality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.andquot;
Review
"Socolovsky’s...skillful reading of the texts encourages a more fluid, transnational reimaging and redefining of American cultural identity."
Review
andquot;Many mainstream American grudgingly concede that racial and ethnic minorities are entitled to equal rights in politics, education, employment, and residency but still draw the line where marriage, family, and sexual relations are concerned ... In her fascinating path-breaking study, Jolie A. Sheffer convincingly argues that one of the earliest and boldest challenges to that insulated worldview came from female writers and reformers of color.andquot;
Synopsis
During the first half of the twentieth century, American Jews demonstrated a commitment to racial justice as well as an attraction to African American culture. Until now, the debate about whether such black-Jewish encounters thwarted or enabled Jewsandrsquo; claims to white privilege has focused on men and representations of masculinity while ignoring questions of women and femininity. The White Negress investigates literary and cultural texts by Jewish and African American women, opening new avenues of inquiry that yield more complex stories about Jewishness, African American identity, and the meanings of whiteness.
Lori Harrison-Kahan examines writings by Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as the blackface performances of vaudevillian Sophie Tucker and controversies over the musical and film adaptations of Show Boat and Imitation of Life. Moving between literature and popular culture, she illuminates how the dynamics of interethnic exchange have at once produced and undermined the binary of black and white.
Synopsis
During the first half of the twentieth century, American Jews demonstrated a commitment to racial justice as well as an attraction to African American culture. Until now, the debate about whether such black-Jewish encounters thwarted or enabled Jews' claims to white privilege has focused on men and representations of masculinity while ignoring questions of women and femininity. The White Negress investigates literary and cultural texts by Jewish and African American women, opening new avenues of inquiry that yield more complex stories about Jewishness, African American identity, and the meanings of whiteness.
Synopsis
This book examines the ways that recent U.S. Latina literature challenges popular definitions of nationhood and national identity. It explores the works of Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American writers Denise Chavez, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Esmeralda Santiago, and Himilce Novas to show how these texts argue for the legitimate belonging of Latino/as within U.S. borders and counter much of today’s anti-immigration rhetoric.
Synopsis
This book examines the ways in which recent U.S. Latina literature challenges popular definitions of nationhood and national identity. It explores a group of feminist texts that are representative of the U.S. Latina literary boom of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, when an emerging group of writers gained prominence in mainstream and academic circles. Through close readings of select contemporary Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American works, Maya Socolovsky argues that these narratives are “remapping” the United States so that it is fully integrated within a larger, hemispheric Americas.
Looking at such concerns as nation, place, trauma, and storytelling, writers Denise Chavez, Sandra Cisneros, Esmeralda Santiago, Ana Castillo, Himilce Novas, and Judith Ortiz Cofer challenge popular views of Latino cultural “unbelonging” and make strong cases for the legitimate presence of Latinas/os within the United States. In this way, they also counter much of today’s anti-immigration rhetoric.
Imagining the U.S. as part of a broader "Americas," these writings trouble imperialist notions of nationhood, in which political borders and a long history of intervention and colonization beyond those borders have come to shape and determine the dominant culture's writing and the defining of all Latinos as "other" to the nation.
About the Author
JOLIE A. SHEFFER is an assistant professor of English and affiliated faculty in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Mulattos, Mysticism, and Marriage: African American Identity and Psychic Integration
2. Half-Caste Family Romances: Divergent Paths of Asian American Identity
3. The Mexican Mestizo/a in the Mexican American Imaginary
4. Half-Breeds and Homesteaders: Native/American Alliances in the West
5. Blood and Blankets: Americanizing European Immigrants through Cultural Miscegenation and Textile Reproduction
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index