Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen played prominent roles in the black
literary heyday known as the Harlem Renaissance. Revived by
feminists in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their novels raise
important questions about gender and race. In this book Jacquelyn
McLendon looks at Jessie Fauset's Plum Bun (1929) and Comedy:
American Style (1933) and Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and
Passing (1929) and finds them revisionary and subversive. She goes
beyond previous feminist criticism to focus on the authors' works
rather than their lives and moves toward developing new theoretical
ways of looking at black women's writing. McLendon shows how the
nineteenth-century stereotype of the tragic mulatto as invented by
white writers became both a political tool and an artistic device
in the capable hands of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen. Using black
female protagonists who often passed as whites, Fauset and Larsen
showed that blacks were despised not for their lack of education or
money or manners, but simply because they were black. Fauset and
Larsen attempted to blur the lines of distinction between classes
and to counter racist representations of blackness and black female
sexuality by satirizing the middle class and using the tragic
mulatto and passing as metaphors. Focusing on the psychology of
black women, they brought up issues of identity and difference for
both blacks and women and insisted on the authenticity of the black
experience of mulattoes and black middle-class society.
General
Imprint: |
University of Virginia Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
June 1995 |
First published: |
June 1995 |
Authors: |
Jacquelyn Y. McLendon
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 22mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
160 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8139-1553-1 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8139-1553-8 |
Barcode: |
9780813915531 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!