{"id":12756,"date":"2011-03-20T22:07:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T22:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=12756"},"modified":"2014-01-16T15:45:53","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T15:45:53","slug":"meridians-mapping-metaphors-of-mixed-race-indentity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=12756","title":{"rendered":"Meridians: Mapping Metaphors of Mixed Race Indentity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meridians: Mapping Metaphors of Mixed Race Indentity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Florida
\nAugust 2004
\n238 pages<\/p>\n

Shane Willow Trudell<\/strong><\/p>\n

A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in partial fulfullment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy<\/em><\/p>\n

Although mixed race identity traditionally has been equated with conflict, the conflict is not necessarily lived but may be more accurately viewed as a conflict of language, a conflict of metaphors. Traditionally, metaphors of mixed race identity have reflected notions of opposition and hierarchy; at the same time, mixed race individuals have searched for Utopian spaces in which conflict and tragedy are alleviated and race is imagined as a unifying, rather than divisive, idea. This study looks at the treatment of mixed race women in twentieth century novels, beginning with Jean Toomer’s Cane<\/a><\/em> (1925) and then jumping to the end of the century\u2014to Fran Ross’s Oreo<\/a><\/em> (1975), Danzy Senna’s<\/a> Caucasia<\/a><\/em> (1998), and Jenoyne Adams’s Resurrecting Mingus<\/a><\/em> (2001)\u2014to study texts written during and after the Black Power Movement<\/a>. It begins with an analysis of metaphors of blackness and whiteness that developed in the nineteenth century and then questions the ways these metaphors have traditionally complicated possibilities for mixed race identity, resulting in replications of the tragic mulatto<\/a> and adherence to the one-drop rule<\/a>. Subsequently, the analysis moves to contemporary metaphors of mixed race identity to explore their limits and possibilities and the ways in which these metaphors are implicated by questions of gender. The texts under analysis respond to the same set of problems, including the longing for Utopian spaces of wholeness and harmony within mixed race identities and non-traditional families. Additionally, these texts contain a latent struggle over questions of history, family, and racial identity. They long to articulate Utopian visions while they are confined within the historical moments and literary formulas in which they were written, and they struggle to negotiate postmodern questions of identity, self, wholeness, and harmony\u2014both individual and communal\u2014while bound by literary and social conventions that resist the Utopian visions they hope to articulate. Each text attempts to envision Utopian social, political, familial and individual spaces where the “play” of identity\u2014the possibility of negotiation and individualization\u2014may be manifested, Utopian visions of harmony may be realized, and new metaphors may be articulated.<\/p>\n

TABLE OF CONTENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n