{"id":10369,"date":"2010-12-01T23:05:17","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T23:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10369"},"modified":"2010-12-01T23:14:16","modified_gmt":"2010-12-01T23:14:16","slug":"what-are-you-exploring-racial-categorization-in-nowhere-else-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10369","title":{"rendered":"What Are You?&#8221;: Exploring Racial Categorization in \u201cNowhere Else on Earth\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/20077861\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cWhat Are You?\u201d: Exploring Racial Categorization in \u201cNowhere Else on Earth\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/action\/showPublication?journalCode=southlitj\" target=\"_blank\">The Southern Literary Journal<\/a><br \/>\nVolume 39, Number 1 (Fall, 2006)<br \/>\npages 33-53<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www2.unca.edu\/lit\/people\/elocklear.html\" target=\"_blank\">Erica Abrams Locklear<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Literature &amp; Language<br \/>\n<em>University of North Carolina, Asheville<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In his introduction to the 1985 collection of essays entitled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/presssite\/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&amp;isbn=9780226284354\" target=\"_blank\">\u201c<\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/presssite\/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&amp;isbn=9780226284354\" target=\"_blank\">Race,\u201d Writing, and Difference<\/a>, <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henry_Louis_Gates\" target=\"_blank\">Henry Louis Gates<\/a> rightfully asserts: \u201cRace, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction\u201d (4), Even so, contemporary disputes centered on race remain one of American most glaring problems. Although laws supporting atrocities such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=4781\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Crow<\/a> South rest in the past, the systems of classification that inspired them still operate on many different levels of present-day American society, ranging from the way people describe themselves, to the labels people place on difference, to the way the American government decides what fraction of \u201cblood\u201d constitutes race. Fiction writer <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Josephine_Humphreys\" target=\"_blank\">Josephine Humphreys<\/a> explores the complexities, falsifications, and implications of racial classification for the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lumbee\" target=\"_blank\">Lumbee Indians<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robeson_County,_North_Carolina\" target=\"_blank\">Robeson County, North Carolina<\/a> in her historically based novel <em><a href=\"http:\/\/us.penguingroup.com\/nf\/Book\/BookDisplay\/0,,9780141002064,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">Nowhere Else on Earth<\/a>. <\/em>First published in 2000, the work\u2019s 2001 Penguin edition includes a readers guide following the text in which Humphreys explains her impetus for writing about the Lumbee people. She admits that when she first encountered a Lumbee aboard a train, upon discovering ihat the woman was not white, Humphreys asked, \u201cWhat are you?\u201d, She goes on to remember that the young woman explained the story of the Lumbee people, as well as the infamous tale&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/action\/ecommPurchase\/10.2307\/20077861\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhat Are You?\u201d: Exploring Racial Categorization in \u201cNowhere Else on Earth\u201d The Southern Literary Journal Volume 39, Number 1 (Fall, 2006) pages 33-53 Erica Abrams Locklear, Assistant Professor of Literature &amp; Language University of North Carolina, Asheville In his introduction to the 1985 collection of essays entitled \u201cRace,\u201d Writing, and Difference, Henry Louis Gates rightfully [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,20],"tags":[4564,4563,4565,877,879,4566,3864],"class_list":["post-10369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-erica-a-locklear","tag-erica-abrams-locklear","tag-erica-locklear","tag-lumbee","tag-north-carolina","tag-nowhere-else-on-earth","tag-the-southern-literary-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}