{"id":55439,"date":"2017-12-23T03:35:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T03:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55439"},"modified":"2017-12-23T03:35:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T03:35:54","slug":"black-matters-race-and-literary-history-in-mat-johnsons-pym","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55439","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBlack Matters\u201d: Race and Literary History in Mat Johnson\u2019s Pym"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journals.openedition.org\/ejas\/11523\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>\u201cBlack Matters\u201d: Race and Literary History in Mat Johnson\u2019s <\/strong><\/em><strong>Pym<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/journals.openedition.org\/ejas\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">European Journal of American Studies<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/journals.openedition.org\/ejas\/11406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">11-1 | 2016 : Special Issue: Intimate Frictions: History and Literature in the United States from the 19th to the 21st Century<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/liberalarts.utexas.edu\/english\/faculty\/wilksjm1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Jennifer M. Wilks<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English<br \/>\n<em>University of Texas, Austin<\/em><\/p>\n<p>After being denied tenure for expanding his teaching of race and literary history beyond exclusively African American texts, Chris Jaynes, the protagonist of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.matjohnson.info\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mat Johnson\u2019s<\/a> novel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/202659\/pym-a-novel-by-mat-johnson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Pym<\/em><\/a> (2011), sets out to retrace the voyage from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edgar_Allan_Poe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s<\/a> 1838 novel <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket<\/em><\/a>. This essay examines how Johnson uses Jaynes\u2019 own shipwreck\u2014he and his crew are stranded in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antarctica\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Antarctica<\/a>\u2014to posit the history of race in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">United States<\/a> as a national disaster that overdetermines contemporary social dynamics. Using intertextuality and satire, Johnson follows <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Toni_Morrison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Toni Morrison\u2019s<\/a> precedent in depicting blackness and whiteness as constructs that are inextricably bound and that cannot be understood one without the other. Central to this claim are Johnson\u2019s mirroring of the progressive, 21st-century African American Jaynes with his narrative foil: the pickled, ancient Anglo American Arthur Gordon Pym. I contend that Johnson not only revisits Morrison\u2019s argument but also expands upon it; for, as Jaynes and his fellow characters confront the thorny legacy of race and racism in the United States, they must also face a future in which the country\u2019s changing demographics will render questions of identity more, rather than less, complicated.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.openedition.org\/ejas\/11523\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This essay examines how Johnson uses Jaynes\u2019 own shipwreck\u2014he and his crew are stranded in Antarctica\u2014to posit the history of race in the United States as a national disaster that overdetermines contemporary social dynamics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,20],"tags":[10971,27874,27875,2355,1240],"class_list":["post-55439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-european-journal-of-american-studies","tag-jennifer-m-wilks","tag-jennifer-wilks","tag-mat-johnson","tag-toni-morrison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55439","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=55439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55440,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55439\/revisions\/55440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}