Interracial Family Memoirs: Reconstructing Genealogies across the Color Line
Yale University
230 Prospect Street
Room 101
New Haven, Connecticut 06511
2013-09-16, 12:00-13:15 EDT (Local Time)
Cedric Essi, Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies
University of Erlangen-Nürnberg
During the last two decades numerous autobiographical works have emerged which explore family histories in black and white, such as Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father,” June Cross’s “Secret Daughter” or Edward Ball’s “Slaves in the Family.” Essi subsumes these works under the umbrella term ‘interracial family memoir’ and draws up a typology of ‘genealogies’ in order to categorize and interrogate the ways in which these texts thematize kinship across the color line. This talk will provide a critical overview of the genre and discusses how the US-specific ideology of the one-drop rule affects interracial family experiences, to what extent transnational affiliations conflict with racial self-identification, on what terms white motherhood is rendered visible and how the interracial family is often imagined as an allegory of the American nation. This talk is part of the GLC Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bring your lunch; drinks & dessert will be provided.
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