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Contemporary Essays and Memoirs, Volume 1 is a collection of scholarly essays and recent reviews of the best of contemporary essays and memoirs. The book reviews and essays include:

"The Changing Face of Biraciality: The White/Jewish Mother as Tragic Mulatto Figure in James McBride's The Color of Water and Danzy Senna's Caucasia" by Reginald Watson

"The Life of the Body in American Autobiography: The Year in the Us" by Leigh Gilmore

"Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance" by Peter Carrol

"Hunger Pangs (Review of Hunger by Roxane Gay)" by Katie Gemmill

"Sherman Alexie's You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir" by Yvonne C. Garrett.

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Publié par	Infobase Publishing
Date de parution	01 février 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438182049
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1688€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Contemporary Essays and Memoirs, Volume 1
Copyright © 2019 by Infobase
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Facts On File An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-4381-8204-9
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Contents Chapters The Changing Face of Biraciality: The White/Jewish Mother as Tragic Mulatto Figure in James McBride's The Color of Water and Danzy Senna's Caucasia The Life of the Body in American Autobiography: The Year in the Us Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance Hunger Pangs (Review of Hunger by Roxane Gay) Sherman Alexie's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir Support Materials Acknowledgments
Chapters
The Changing Face of Biraciality: The White/Jewish Mother as Tragic Mulatto Figure in James McBride's The Color of Water and Danzy Senna's Caucasia
2002
In literature, the image or face of the mulatto has changed considerably since the 19th century. Now, as reflected in the current day, a large number of mixed race individuals are choosing to embrace more than one aspect of their heritage and to write about their journeys. Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's biracial daughter, is just one example of how the restrictive categories of black/white are no longer acceptable. In her book Black, White And Jewish , Rebecca Walker describes her birth in the following way: "A mulatta baby swaddled and held in loving arms, two brown, two white, in the middle of the segregated South. I'm sure the nurses didn't have many reference points. Let's see. Black. White. Nigger. Jew. That makes me the tragic mulatta caught between two worlds like the proverbial deer in the headlights" (12–13).
Walker's sarcastic words, tinged with humor, are just a small sample of how she, like several other biracial authors in the 1990's, refuses to be limited by race. As seen with Walker, there is also a Jewish addition to the black/white equation of race, a factor that exacerbates the issue. In fact, the term mulatto, which has its origins in the term, "mule," is now derogatory. Though there are still some tragic moments in their lives, biracial subjects resist the image of tragic figures stuck in a racial limbo. Instead, they willingly fight to celebrate the diversity of their roots, a dynamic that will be seen in the works of James McBride and Danzy Senna. In these accounts the traditional literary patterns of the past are shifted as the white/Jewish mother becomes the central focus of study, but the spotlight also shines on their mixed-race offspring. The literary face of the mulatto has, indeed, changed in a very unique way.
In the past, many people of mixed race were forced into a "black" category, particularly if any trace of Negro ancestry could be found in their features. These dynamics are reflected in the literature of both the 19th and 20th centuries, where mulatto characters are mainly beautiful mulattas who tragically struggle with adjusting in both the white and black worlds. For example, Cassy, a tragic mulatta character in Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin , is a dynamic figure who endures tragedy in her struggles to escape the evil Simon Legree. Cassy becomes a mulatto concubine, but it is through this role that she manages boldly to control her own destiny. At one point of the novel she commits infanticide by poisoning her own child. In a sense, she murders her own motherhood so that her baby will not have to endure a life of slavery. This act of love/murder shows that Cassy is a strong-willed woman who, by killing her child, cuts the umbilical cord of oppression that will enslave it.
This pattern of sacrifice carries over to contemporary biracial literature, evidenced by the white/Jewish mother in the 1990s who selflessly works to save her mixed-race children from the devastating effects of racism. For example, in The Color of Water the white/Jewish mother conceals the Jewish heritage from her children; in effect, she "kills" her children's ties to the white side of the family. In most cases, the white mother is disowned and becomes "dead" to her white origins. Under these circumstances, it is her black husband's family who is more accepting, becoming surrogate parents for her resurrection. In other words the white mother, like the tragic mulattas of 19th and early 20th century biracial literature, experiences ostracism for her choices, but after her fall she is picked back up by the black community. The white/Jewish mothers in The Color of Water and Caucasia become reverse racial parvenus once they are forced to go backward on the ladder of their social climb. Their marriages to black men create a stigma that drives them to commit "familycide," meaning they are forced, in most cases, to kill off or severely limit connections with their white family. In turn, the family of the white/ Jewish mother disowns or ceases contact with her. They become non-existent or dead in the eyes of their birth families.
In best selling works like James McBride's The Color of Water and Danzy Senna's Caucasia the white woman, like the tragic mulatta of old, goes through the act of "passing" although it is a "passing" of a different form. Unlike traditional mulatto characters who are forced into hiding their black identities, the white/Jewish woman of today's biracial literature is usually forced into revealing her connections to the black community. She is forced to "pass," but it is a passing that connotes entering into the black population rather literally in McBride's and Senna's works. In Senna's Caucasia , the mother, like Neil Kingsblood in Sinclair Lewis's Kingsblood Royal , gives up privilege and status, choosing to sacrifice material gain in order to create an atmosphere of comfort for her biracial offspring. Such is the scenario in the works of McBride and Senna, who effectively highlight the struggles endured by interracial families.
In the very first lines of The Color of Water , Ruth's italicized words of "I'm dead" greet the reader. "You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty years" (1). "My family mourned me when I married your father. They said Kaddish and sat Shiva. That's how orthodox Jews mourn their dead" (2). She was thus dead to her family. Such is the level of ostracism that may be experienced when white/Jewish women marry black men and "pass" into their husband's community. [They cut off their white roots and die socially so that their mixed children can live decent, well-adjusted lives as free from racism as the mother can manipulate.] The white mother, by society's standards, must become black in order to raise half-white/half-black children. According to James McBride, his "mommy" (Ruth) would often tell him and his siblings that she was a "light-skinned" black woman, a redefined mulatto, so to speak. Unlike the racial parvenus of the past, Ruth sustains the disconnection from a family that has already disconnected itself from her. Ruth had also rejected her Jewish name, Rachel Shilsky. Consistent with a pattern seen in the black bourgeois novel of passing, Ruth eventually learns to establish dual comfort in both the black and white worlds. In this non-fictional account, McBride interviews his mother Ruth and brilliantly manages to recapture her reluctance to speak about the Jewish roots from which she had been severed. McBride talks of how his "light-skinned" mother "refused to acknowledge her whiteness," and how, while growing up, he always had an "ache" and an "itch" to know the real truth regarding his mother's background (22–23).
In tribute to his mother, McBride makes the following statement: "There are probably a hundred reasons why Ruthie should have stayed on the Jewish side, instead of taking New Jersey Transit and the F train to go to a Christian church in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with her Shvartse children and friends, and I'm sure the Old Testament lists them all, but I'm glad she came over to the African American side" (274). McBride celebrates his mother's passing over to black culture, although according to F. James Davis, "the concept of passing applies only to blacks—consistent with the nation's unique definition of the group" (14). Still, in looking at current day biracial literature, one must learn to step beyond such rigid definitions of the term, "passing."
Evidence of Ruth's total immersion into black culture comes out frequently in the work.