{"id":4962,"date":"2010-02-03T03:46:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T03:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=4962"},"modified":"2015-03-25T22:06:58","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T22:06:58","slug":"jean-toomer-and-cane-%e2%80%9cmixed-blood%e2%80%9d-impossibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=4962","title":{"rendered":"Jean Toomer and Cane: \u201cMixed-Blood\u201d Impossibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1353\/arq.0.0025\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Jean Toomer and Cane: \u201cMixed-Blood\u201d Impossibilities<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/arizona_quarterly_a_journal_of_american_literature_culture_and_theory\" target=\"_blank\">Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/arizona_quarterly_a_journal_of_american_literature_culture_and_theory\/toc\/arq.64.4.html\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 64, Number 4, Winter 2008<\/a><br \/>\nE-ISSN: 1558-9595, Print ISSN: 0004-1610<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1353\/arq.0.0025\" target=\"_blank\">10.1353\/arq.0.0025<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gmpellegrini.org\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Gino Michael Pellegrini<\/strong><\/a>, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English<br \/>\n<em>Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Even though <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jean_Toomer\" target=\"_blank\">Jean Toomer<\/a> was black and white, his fascination with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=450\" target=\"_blank\">miscegenation<\/a> in his hybrid short-story cycle <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cane_(novel)\" target=\"_blank\">Cane<\/a><\/em> (1923) was puzzling and untimely. <a href=\"http:\/\/history.unc.edu\/faculty\/williamson.html\" target=\"_blank\">Joel Williamson<\/a> writes that by 1915 the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">one-drop rule<\/a> had been accepted by both blacks and whites in the North and South (109). Hence, mixed bloods with visible traces of blackness, including members of the former mulatto elite, would be judged as black by both blacks and whites. At best, they could be \u201cin some way, satisfyingly black\u201d. In this article, I put forward a reading of Toomer and <em>Cane<\/em> that explains his fascination with miscegenation in terms of his hope for what was possible in America. Specifically, his unique and solitary position vis-\u00e0-vis the New Negro in Black Washington and the Young American in White Manhattan provided him with the reasons, models, and ideals to believe that, in <em>Cane<\/em>, he could effectively voice and sketch out a mixed race sensibility and community that would be grasped and appreciated by the American public. However, in the process of writing <em>Cane<\/em>, he came face to face with the rigid categories and limits of the black-white color line in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jim_Crow_laws\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Crow<\/a> era, which rendered unintelligible and unsustainable in the culture at large the mixed race sensibility and community he sought to express and develop. In other words, we see in Cane the ultimately futile clash of Toomer\u2019s Young American ideals with the socio-political realities of the black-white color line. <em>Cane<\/em> reveals the pain and frustration of this clash through muffled and ambivalent narrative voices, and through sketches of unacknowledged, crippled, misunderstood, and lost mixed race protagonists&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/journals\/arizona_quarterly_a_journal_of_american_literature_culture_and_theory\/v064\/64.4.pellegrini.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jean Toomer and Cane: \u201cMixed-Blood\u201d Impossibilities Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory Volume 64, Number 4, Winter 2008 E-ISSN: 1558-9595, Print ISSN: 0004-1610 DOI: 10.1353\/arq.0.0025 Gino Michael Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California Even though Jean Toomer was black and white, his fascination with miscegenation in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1196,8,20],"tags":[1066,4613,1037,1966,1996,893],"class_list":["post-4962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-arizona-quarterly","tag-gino-m-pellegrini","tag-gino-michael-pellegrini","tag-gino-pellegrini","tag-jean-toomer","tag-joel-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4962","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=4962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}