{"id":49016,"date":"2016-09-09T18:04:20","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T18:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49016"},"modified":"2016-09-10T16:02:28","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T16:02:28","slug":"imperfect-unions-staging-miscegenation-in-u-s-drama-and-fiction-by-diana-rebekkah-paulin-review-ings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49016","title":{"rendered":"Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction by Diana Rebekkah Paulin (review) [Ings]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction by Diana Rebekkah Paulin (review) [Ings]<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

African American Review<\/a>
\nVolume 47, Number 1, Spring 2014<\/a><\/p>\n

Katharine Nicholson Ings<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English
\nManchester College, North Manchester, Indiana<\/em><\/p>\n

Diana Rebekkah Paulin<\/a>. Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction<\/em><\/a>. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012. 315 pp. $75.00 cloth\/ $25.00 paper.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Diana Rebekkah Paulin\u2019s<\/a> Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction<\/em><\/a>, the author explores how the theatrical and literary production of miscegenation<\/a> from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries both dismantled and reinforced the black-white binary that bolstered individual and national identity during Reconstruction<\/a> and the subsequent period of nation-building. Paulin analyzes race from a performative perspective\u2014an approach she establishes as unfamiliar to a nineteenth-century American\u2014and so she mines her texts for the complex and what she calls the \u201coften unseen processes\u201d (xii) by which interracial relationships become spectacular, or staged. But she also frames her topic of interracial unions as a methodology of its own: if her sources\u2019 processes are \u201cunseen,\u201d Paulin consciously employs \u201cmiscegenated reading practices\u201d (xii) by engaging with diverse fields of study, including American studies and transhemispheric<\/a> studies alongside theatre and performance studies, comparative race and ethnic literary studies, and literary history.<\/p>\n

Part of this book\u2019s appeal comes from how Paulin herself stages the narratives within. Selecting an eclectic variety of texts, Paulin organizes her chapters by pairing and comparing; she often juxtaposes a playwright with a novelist or short-story writer\u2014Dion Boucicault<\/a> with Louisa May Alcott<\/a>, Bartley Campbell<\/a> with William Dean Howells<\/a>, Thomas Dixon<\/a> with Charles Chesnutt<\/a>, Pauline Hopkins<\/a> with the trio Bob Cole<\/a>, J. Rosamond Johnson<\/a>, and James Weldon Johnson<\/a>\u2014to emphasize the intersecting performative aspects of their works. She introduces each chapter by situating the authors and texts within their respective biographical and cultural contexts, paying particular attention to the performance history and reception of each play. This strategy is particularly successful for chapter one, \u201cUnder the Covers of Forbidden Desire,\u201d Paulin\u2019s treatments of Dion Boucicault\u2019s play The Octoroon<\/em><\/a> (1859) and Louisa May Alcott\u2019s stories \u201cM. L.\u201d and \u201cMy Contraband\u201d (both 1863). She develops her analysis beyond a familiar argument of how black blood in each work functions as either a catalyst for \u201cchaos\u201d (14) or exotic \u201cart\u201d (36) to a consideration of same-sex miscegenation (including audience reception). In Boucicault, for instance, a quadroon<\/a> slave and an Indian have a friendship that Paulin locates \u201csomewhere on the spectrum between the homosocial<\/a> and the homoerotic<\/a>\u201d (20); in Alcott, white women in an authoritative, read \u201cmasculine\u201d role express their same-sex desire for former slaves via the men\u2019s \u201cfeminized characterizations\u201d (41)…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction by Diana Rebekkah Paulin (review) [Ings] African American Review Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2014 Katharine Nicholson Ings, Associate Professor of English Manchester College, North Manchester, Indiana Diana Rebekkah Paulin. Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012. 315 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,1196,8,20],"tags":[2758,4988,4987,11106,2937],"class_list":["post-49016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-african-american-review","tag-diana-paulin","tag-diana-r-paulin","tag-diana-rebekkah-paulin","tag-katharine-nicholson-ings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49016","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=49016"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49038,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49016\/revisions\/49038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}