{"id":24259,"date":"2013-02-07T00:30:44","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T00:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24259"},"modified":"2022-02-26T15:16:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T15:16:44","slug":"crossing-black-mixed-race-identity-in-modern-american-fiction-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24259","title":{"rendered":"Crossing B(l)ack: Mixed-Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crossing B(l)ack: Mixed-Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Tennessee Press<\/a>
\n2013-01-11
\n150 pages
\nCloth ISBN-10: 1572339322; ISBN-13: 978-1572339323<\/p>\n

Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of English
\nFlorida Atlantic University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The past two decades have seen a growing influx of biracial discourse in fiction, memoir, and theory, and since the 2008 election of Barack Obama<\/a> to the presidency, debates over whether America has entered a \u201cpost-racial\u201d phase have set the media abuzz. In this penetrating and provocative study, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins adds a new dimension to this dialogue as she investigates the ways in which various mixed-race writers and public figures have redefined both \u201cblackness\u201d and \u201cwhiteness\u201d by invoking multiple racial identities.<\/p>\n

Focusing on several key novels\u2014Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> Quicksand<\/em> (1928), Lucinda Roy\u2019s<\/a> Lady Moses<\/em> (1998), and Danzy Senna\u2019s Caucasia<\/em><\/a> (1998)\u2014as well as memoirs by Obama, James McBride<\/a>, and Rebecca Walker<\/a> and the personae of singer Mariah Carey<\/a> and actress Halle Berry<\/a>, Dagbovie-Mullins challenges conventional claims about biracial identification with a concept she calls \u201cblack-sentient mixed-race identity.\u201d Whereas some multiracial organizations can diminish blackness by, for example, championing the inclusion of multiple-race options on census forms and similar documents, a black-sentient consciousness stresses a perception rooted in blackness\u2014\u201ca connection to a black consciousness,\u201d writes the author, \u201cthat does not overdetermine but still plays a large role in one\u2019s racial identification.\u201d By examining the nuances of this concept through close readings of fiction, memoir, and the public images of mixed-race celebrities, Dagbovie-Mullins demonstrates how a \u201cblack-sentient mixed-race identity reconciles the widening separation between black\/white mixed race and blackness that has been encouraged by contemporary mixed-race politics and popular culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

A book that promises to spark new debate and thoughtful reconsiderations of an especially timely topic, Crossing B(l)ack<\/em> recognizes and investigates assertions of a black-centered mixed-race identity that does not divorce a premodern racial identity from a postmodern racial fluidity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past two decades have seen a growing influx of biracial discourse in fiction, memoir, and theory, and since the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the presidency, debates over whether America has entered a \u201cpost-racial\u201d phase have set the media abuzz. In this penetrating and provocative study, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins adds a new dimension to this dialogue as she investigates the ways in which various mixed-race writers and public figures have redefined both \u201cblackness\u201d and \u201cwhiteness\u201d by invoking multiple racial identities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,11,1196,8,17],"tags":[1340,1704,364,11228,113,87,362,4265,11226,3352,4264,11227,3548],"class_list":["post-24259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-books","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","tag-danzy-senna","tag-halle-berry","tag-james-mcbride","tag-lucinda-roy","tag-mariah-carey","tag-nella-larsen","tag-rebecca-walker","tag-sika-a-dagbovie","tag-sika-a-dagbovie-mullins","tag-sika-alaine-dagbovie","tag-sika-dagbovie","tag-sika-dagbovie-mullins","tag-university-of-tennessee-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24259","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=24259"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54114,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24259\/revisions\/54114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}