{"id":26685,"date":"2012-11-26T00:13:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T00:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26685"},"modified":"2014-12-24T20:04:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T20:04:14","slug":"essence-and-the-mulatto-traveler-europe-as-embodiment-in-nella-larsen%e2%80%99s-quicksand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26685","title":{"rendered":"Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen\u2019s Quicksand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/item\/3dp6q6n2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen\u2019s Quicksand<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/acgcc_jtas\" target=\"_blank\">The Journal of Transnational American Studies<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/search?entity=acgcc_jtas;volume=4;issue=1\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 4, Number 1<\/a> (2012)<br \/>\n15 pages<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shu.edu\/academics\/profiles\/profile-details.cfm?customel_datapageid_148360=220109\" target=\"_blank\">Jeffrey H. Gray<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English<br \/>\n<em>Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Originally published as Jeffrey Gray, \u201cEssence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen\u2019s <em>Quicksand<\/em>,\u201d <em>NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction<\/em> 27, no. 3 (1994): 257\u201370.<\/p>\n<p>This 1994 article by Jeffrey Gray originally appeared in the journal <em><a href=\"http:\/\/novel.dukejournals.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction<\/a> <\/em>(Duke University Press). An early foray into transnational American Studies, Gray\u2019s analysis of the role \u201cEurope\u201d plays both in the narrative and in the life of the author herself begins with a discussion of the object of art\u2014the self as exoticized, distanced other\u2014imagined and displayed against the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/carceral\" target=\"_blank\">carceral<\/a> black body in the American imaginary, an imaginary that holds the protagonist, Helga, hostage to an indeterminacy represented by her <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\">mulatto<\/a> status. Gray argues that the \u201cquicksand\u201d of the search for essence, whether located in the body or in the eyes of others, eventually dissolves the protagonist\u2019s sense that a change of place can change the truth that essence does not exist. Gray references the shared observation among African American international celebs (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Wright_(author)\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Wright<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Baldwin\" target=\"_blank\">James Baldwin<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Josephine_Baker\" target=\"_blank\">Josephine Baker<\/a>\u2014whose 1973 interview with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.harvard.edu\/~amciv\/faculty\/gates.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Henry Louis Gates, Jr.<\/a>, is cited) that \u201cbeing different is different\u201d in Europe, yet that otherness is finally also not an experience of self, which the narrative (and perhaps the author\u2019s life as well) proves to be endlessly deferred.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/item\/3dp6q6n2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Essence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen\u2019s Quicksand The Journal of Transnational American Studies Volume 4, Number 1 (2012) 15 pages Jeffrey H. Gray, Professor of English Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey Originally published as Jeffrey Gray, \u201cEssence and the Mulatto Traveler: Europe as Embodiment in Nella Larsen\u2019s Quicksand,\u201d [&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":[12887,12886,12842,87,6332],"class_list":["post-26685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-jeffrey-gray","tag-jeffrey-h-gray","tag-journal-of-transnational-american-studies","tag-nella-larsen","tag-the-journal-of-transnational-american-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685","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=26685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}