{"id":12193,"date":"2011-02-21T01:33:09","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T01:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=12193"},"modified":"2014-12-24T20:08:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T20:08:13","slug":"liminality-and-transgression-in-langston-hughes%e2%80%99-%e2%80%9cmulatto%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=12193","title":{"rendered":"Liminality and Transgression in Langston Hughes\u2019 \u201cMulatto\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dialnet.unirioja.es\/servlet\/articulo?codigo=258612\" target=\"_blank\">Liminality and Transgression in Langston Hughes\u2019 \u201cMulatto\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.unirioja.es\/servicios\/sp\/ej\/cif\/cif.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Cuadernos de investigaci\u00f3n filol\u00f3gica (C.I.F.)<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.unirioja.es\/servicios\/sp\/ej\/cif\/cif26.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Number 26 (2000)<br \/>\n<\/a>pages 263-271<br \/>\nISSN: 0211-0547<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:isoto@flog.uned.es\" target=\"_blank\">Isabel Soto<\/a><br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Universidad Nacional de Educaci\u00f3n a Distancia<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This essay explores societal fear of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\">mulatto<\/a> as charted by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Langston_Hughes\" target=\"_blank\">Langston Hughes\u2019<\/a> play \u201cMulatto\u201d (1931).\u00a0 \u201cMulatto\u201d dramatizes the demand for social incorporation by a mixed-race young man, Robert Norwood, who suffers a double exclusion: from a white body politic, and from the black community, by virtue of his claim to a white heritage.\u00a0 I make extensive use of the terms \u2018liminal\u2019 and \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Liminality\" target=\"_blank\">liminality<\/a>\u2019 (taken from the work of anthropologist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Victor_Turner\" target=\"_blank\">Victor Turner<\/a>) to refer to Robert\u2019s status, his attempts to redraw that status, and the representation of space in the play.\u00a0 I argue that white characters\u2019, and hence white society\u2019s, refusal to grant Robert access their power structures reveals a complex anxiety or fear of the borderland or liminal creature that is the mulatto, born of transgression (and, in Robert&#8217;s case, ultimately a transgressor himself).\u00a0 I will argue that the play is as much about female agency as it about the danger attendant on the (non-white) exercise of power.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/dialnet.unirioja.es\/servlet\/fichero_articulo?codigo=258612&amp;orden=74473\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Liminality and Transgression in Langston Hughes\u2019 \u201cMulatto\u201d Cuadernos de investigaci\u00f3n filol\u00f3gica (C.I.F.) Number 26 (2000) pages 263-271 ISSN: 0211-0547 Isabel Soto Universidad Nacional de Educaci\u00f3n a Distancia This essay explores societal fear of the mulatto as charted by Langston Hughes\u2019 play \u201cMulatto\u201d (1931).\u00a0 \u201cMulatto\u201d dramatizes the demand for social incorporation by a mixed-race young man, [&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],"tags":[5485,2785,6209,488],"class_list":["post-12193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-cuadernos-de-investigacion-filologica","tag-isabel-soto","tag-isabel-soto-garcia","tag-langston-hughes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12193","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=12193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}