{"id":19821,"date":"2012-01-14T02:06:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T02:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19821"},"modified":"2012-01-14T02:06:08","modified_gmt":"2012-01-14T02:06:08","slug":"jean-toomer-and-american-racial-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19821","title":{"rendered":"Jean Toomer and American Racial Discourse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean Toomer and American Racial Discourse<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Texas Studies in Literature and Language<\/a>
\nVolume 35, Number 2<\/a>, Anxieties of Identity in American Writing (Summer 1993)
\npages 226-250<\/p>\n

George Hutchinson<\/a><\/strong>, Booth Tarkington Professor of Literary Studies; Adjunct Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies; Adjunct Professor of American Studies
\nIndiana University, Bloomington<\/em><\/p>\n

The culture which will transcend, and thus unite, East and West, or the Earthlings and the Galactics, is not likely to be one which does equal justice to each, but one which looks back on both with the amused condescension typical of later generations looking back at their ancestors.<\/p>\n

Knowledge of what cannot be said… signals the rock-bottom shape, the boundaries, of our situation in the world; it is the ethical, in the classical sense of the term.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An undated poem kept in a tin box that no one but the author ever saw in his lifetime bears haunting witness to the great lack of Jean Toomer’s<\/a> existence:<\/p>\n

Above my sleep
\nTortured in deprival
\nStripped of the warmth of a name
\nMy life breaks madly. . . .
\nBreaks against world
\nLike a pale moth breaking
\nAgainst sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In their biography of the poet, The Lives of Jean Toomer<\/a><\/em>, Cynthia Kerman and Richard Eldridge discuss the relationship of this poem to Toomer’s sense of lacking a permanent and certain name, deriving from the fact that his name had changed during his childhood and that different family members called him by different names. His grandfather, for example (the patriarch with whom he lived to young adulthood and who died, Toomer claimed, the day after he completed the first draft of “Kabnis”), would not acknowledge the name he had been given at birth. “Jean Toomer” itself is a later fabrication of the author…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Toomer and American Racial Discourse Texas Studies in Literature and Language Volume 35, Number 2, Anxieties of Identity in American Writing (Summer 1993) pages 226-250 George Hutchinson, Booth Tarkington Professor of Literary Studies; Adjunct Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies; Adjunct Professor of American Studies Indiana University, Bloomington The culture which will […]<\/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":[3136,1996,6655],"class_list":["post-19821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-george-hutchinson","tag-jean-toomer","tag-texas-studies-in-literature-and-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19821","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=19821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}