Literary Techniques for Counteracting Stereotypes
Jené Erica Lee
Professor Chris Nealon
The author takes a look at 1977 novel ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko.The review demonstrates how the author silko deals with multi racial concepts and ideas. He also references his full paper which discusses two further novels written by mixed race authors and their written attempts at redefining race.
Heres the link
1 comment:
Quite an interesting article. I'm not sure who the author is. I don't think it' Chris Nealon (as stated) who is more interested in gender theory and gay issues. So, I assume it is by JE Lee and Chris Nealon is the Faculty Member who advised on the article in 1997. Silko's line is an interesting one: the hybrid as the tougher form--might that be born out historically by the writings of Frederick Douglass, whose struggle can be read as a black Negro v white or as the experiences of a bi-racial individual having to position himself within the Negro race? I am not sure, from a literary standpoint, that Lee's article (?) actually faces either race or literary issues. Firstly, she makes a lot of the hypodescent theory and reduces what Omi and Winant actually said considerably. Secondly, by using Silko, she sets her arguments in a particular cultural and fictional framework where mixed race identities were not so problematic. Not all mixed-race identities are equivalent, face equal hostility, can come to the same sort of conclusion. For example, I can remember teaching a pupil who was bi-racial, but looked white: he could play the bi-racial card whenever he wanted, being black when he wanted special treatment and white when he needed to become part of his white street gang for protection and security. His experiences were completely different from a Jamaican-White male, who agonised over what he was and who he was, because he was excluded, as white and sensitive, from the hard Jamaican crowd, and not accepted within the white establishment because his blackness/darker skin was continually read as a marker of naughtiness and cheekiness (rather than idiosyncratic wit). It's a very complex issue, which I admire you for raising and thinking about. Probably, it's fairer to say that this article is an early piece, and bang-up-to-date for its time: Root is referenced and her work on bi-racial identity and rights. (See the close to my review of the football piece). Do you know Roots' Bill of Rights for mixed-race people?
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