{"id":48540,"date":"2016-08-02T02:05:54","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T02:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48540"},"modified":"2016-08-02T02:05:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T02:05:54","slug":"obama-america-and-the-legacy-of-james-alan-mcpherson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48540","title":{"rendered":"Obama, America, and the Legacy of James Alan McPherson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\/obama-america-and-the-legacy-of-james-alan-mcpherson\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Obama, America, and the Legacy of James Alan McPherson<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\" target=\"_blank\">Literary Hub<\/a><br \/>\n2016-08-01<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitneyterrell.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Whitney Terrell<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Whitney Terrell Remembers His Friend and Mentor<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The title story of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Alan_McPherson\" target=\"_blank\">James Alan McPherson\u2019s<\/a> Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection <em>Elbow Room<\/em> opens with an italicized passage:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Narrator is unmanageable. Demonstrates a disregard for form bordering on the paranoid . . . When pressed for reasons, narrator became shrill in insistence that \u201cborders,\u201d \u201cstructures,\u201d \u201cframes,\u201d \u201corder,\u201d and even \u201cform\u201d itself are regarded by him with the highest suspicion. Insists on unevenness as a virtue.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I thought of this last week when I heard that McPherson had died. I was also listening to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">President Obama\u2019s<\/a> speech at the Democratic National Convention. \u201cMy grandparents knew these values weren\u2019t reserved for one race,\u201d Obama said. \u201cThey could be passed down to a half-Kenyan grandson, or a half-Asian granddaughter. In fact, they were the same values <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michelle_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Michelle\u2019s<\/a> parents, the descendants of slaves, taught their own kids, living in a bungalow on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Side,_Chicago\" target=\"_blank\">South Side of Chicago<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It sounded like an innocuous statement: \u201cThese values weren\u2019t reserved for one race.\u201d But Obama was talking about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ann_Dunham\" target=\"_blank\">his mother\u2019s<\/a> family. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scotch-Irish_Americans\" target=\"_blank\">Scotch Irish<\/a> whites in Kansas. I live a few blocks from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kansas\" target=\"_blank\">Kansas<\/a>. It\u2019s not the most hospitable place for, say, half-Kenyans. Or Mexican-Americans. Or Democrats generally.<\/p>\n<p>Then he asserted that the values of these white Kansans were the same as the values of the descendants of slaves.<\/p>\n<p>A turn like that engages what McPherson referred to as the \u201cfunction at the junction.\u201d It\u2019s an unexpected operation that causes fixed categories and settled identities to change. Borders and frames disappear.<\/p>\n<p>Obama\u2019s move was ok. But McPherson\u2019s were better&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\/obama-america-and-the-legacy-of-james-alan-mcpherson\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obama, America, and the Legacy of James Alan McPherson Literary Hub 2016-08-01 Whitney Terrell Whitney Terrell Remembers His Friend and Mentor The title story of James Alan McPherson\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection Elbow Room opens with an italicized passage: Narrator is unmanageable. Demonstrates a disregard for form bordering on the paranoid . . . [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1196,8,26,20],"tags":[24669,23792,24670],"class_list":["post-48540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-james-alan-mcpherson","tag-literary-hub","tag-whitney-terrell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48540","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=48540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48541,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48540\/revisions\/48541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}