Tag: Callaloo

  • Obama’s mixed ancestry generates some of the new uncertainty about blackness. The white part of his genetic inheritance is not socially hidden, as it often is for “light-skinned blacks” who descend from black women sexually exploited by white slaveholders and other white males. Rather, Obama’s white ancestry is right there in the open, visible in…

  • In one of his posthumously published essays Georges Bataille poses a question that we might borrow to consider the narratological and epistemological quandaries at the heart of Nella Larsen’s telling of racial unbelonging in her 1929 novella, Passing. Bataille writes, “why must there be what I know? Why is it a necessity? . . .…

  • Liberating Blackness: The Theme of Whitening in Two Colombian Short Stories Callaloo Volume 35, Number 2, Spring 2012 pages 475-493 DOI: 10.1353/cal.2012.0074 Laurence E. Prescott, Professor Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Pennsylvania State University Hablaré del físico de los negros, casi como de carrera. Tienen dos cosas repugnantes para no gustar, el color negro…

  • The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States (review) Callaloo Volume 35, Number 2, Spring 2012 pages 548-551 DOI: 10.1353/cal.2012.0030 Daynali Flores-Rodriguez, Adjunct Professor of Spanish Inter-American University of Puerto Rico Jiménez Román, Miriam, and Juan Flores, eds. The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Published a…

  • Passing For What? Racial Masquerade and the Demands of Upward Mobility Callaloo Volume 21, Number 2, Spring 1998 pages 381-397 DOI: 10.1353/cal.1998.0108 Phillip Brian Harper, Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Literature; Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, English New York University Ends and Means: The Social-Critical Significance of Racial Passing in the U.S. Context The…

  • Clare Kendry’s “True” Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen’s Passing Callaloo Volume 15, Number 4 (Autumn, 1992) pages 1053-1065 Jennifer DeVere Brody, Professor of Drama Stanford University Interpretations of Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) often have failed to explain the complex symbolism of the narrative. Indeed, dismissive or tendentious criticisms of the text have…

  • Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (review) Callaloo Volume 34, Number 1 (Winter 2011) pages 208-210 E-ISSN: 1080-6512; Print ISSN: 0161-2492 DOI: 10.1353/cal.2011.0007 Kirin Wachter-Grene University of Washington, Seattle Jared Sexton. Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Anxieties about American multiracial identity and practices, known…

  • In the Place of Clare Kendry: A Gothic Reading of Race and Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing Callaloo Volume 34, Number 1, Winter 2011 pages 143-157 DOI: 10.1353/cal.2011.0024 Johanna M. Wagner Maastricht University Feeling her colour heighten under the continued inspection, she slid her eyes down. What, she wondered, could be the reason for such…

  • Articulating Space: The Free-Colored Military Establishment in Colonial Mexico from the Conquest to Independence Callaloo Volume 27, Number 1 (Winter 2004) pages 150-171 DOI: 10.1353/cal.2004.0052 Ben Vinson, III, Vice Dean for Centers, Interdepartmental Programs, and Graduate Programs Johns Hopkins University Introduction: Questioning the Question of Non-White Military Service in Colonial Mexico At the close of…

  • Showing Her Colors: An Afro-German Writes the Blues in Black and White Callaloo Volume 26, Number 2, Spring 2003 pages 306-319 DOI: 10.1353/cal.2003.0045 Karein Kirsten Goertz, Lecturer of Germanic Language and Literature University of Michigan This essay undertakes a detailed analysis of May Ayim’s Blues in Schwarz Weiss and examines her development of what she…