Crossing the Line

Crossing the Line
Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
Total Pages : 267
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780822380924
ISBN-13 : 0822380927
Rating : 4/5 (24 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Crossing the Line by : Gayle Wald

Download or read book Crossing the Line written by Gayle Wald and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000-07-24 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As W. E. B. DuBois famously prophesied in The Souls of Black Folk, the fiction of the color line has been of urgent concern in defining a certain twentieth-century U.S. racial “order.” Yet the very arbitrariness of this line also gives rise to opportunities for racial “passing,” a practice through which subjects appropriate the terms of racial discourse. To erode race’s authority, Gayle Wald argues, we must understand how race defines and yet fails to represent identity. She thus uses cultural narratives of passing to illuminate both the contradictions of race and the deployment of such contradictions for a variety of needs, interests, and desires. Wald begins her reading of twentieth-century passing narratives by analyzing works by African American writers James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen, showing how they use the “passing plot” to explore the negotiation of identity, agency, and freedom within the context of their protagonists' restricted choices. She then examines the 1946 autobiography Really the Blues, which details the transformation of Milton Mesirow, middle-class son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, into Mezz Mezzrow, jazz musician and self-described “voluntary Negro.” Turning to the 1949 films Pinky and Lost Boundaries, which imagine African American citizenship within class-specific protocols of race and gender, she interrogates the complicated representation of racial passing in a visual medium. Her investigation of “post-passing” testimonials in postwar African American magazines, which strove to foster black consumerism while constructing “positive” images of black achievement and affluence in the postwar years, focuses on neglected texts within the archives of black popular culture. Finally, after a look at liberal contradictions of John Howard Griffin’s 1961 auto-ethnography Black Like Me, Wald concludes with an epilogue that considers the idea of passing in the context of the recent discourse of “color blindness.” Wald’s analysis of the moral, political, and theoretical dimensions of racial passing makes Crossing the Line important reading as we approach the twenty-first century. Her engaging and dynamic book will be of particular interest to scholars of American studies, African American studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism.


Crossing the Line Related Books

Crossing the Line
Language: en
Pages: 320
Authors: Kareem Rosser
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-02-09 - Publisher: St. Martin's Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"A marvelous addition to the literature of inspirational sports stories." - Booklist (Starred Review) "This remarkable and inspiring story shines." - Publishers
Crossing the Line
Language: en
Pages: 602
Authors: Karen Traviss
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-10-13 - Publisher: Zondervan

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Shan Frankland forever abandoned the world she knew to come to the rescue of a lost colony on a distant and dangerous planet -- a hostile world coveted by two a
Crossing the Lines
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Sulari Gentill
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

2018 Winner of the Ned Kelly Awards for Best Crime Fiction "As one for whom certain story lines and characters have become as real as life itself, Crossing the
Crossing the Line
Language: en
Pages: 367
Authors: Tia Fisher
Categories: Young Adult Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-03-30 - Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre Ltd.

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

SHORTLISTED FOR THE YOTO CARNEGIE MEDAL 2024. 'Do you feel safe?' A powerful novel exploring how teenagers can be swept up into county lines. Erik's life has be
Crossing the Line
Language: en
Pages: 267
Authors: Gayle Wald
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2000-07-24 - Publisher: Duke University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As W. E. B. DuBois famously prophesied in The Souls of Black Folk, the fiction of the color line has been of urgent concern in defining a certain twentieth-cent