{"id":55577,"date":"2018-01-23T03:57:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T03:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55577"},"modified":"2018-01-25T03:32:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T03:32:34","slug":"the-ineradicable-color-line-danzy-sennas-new-people-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55577","title":{"rendered":"The Ineradicable Color-Line: Danzy Senna\u2019s \u201cNew People\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ineradicable Color-Line: Danzy Senna\u2019s \u201cNew People\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>
\n2017-08-01<\/p>\n

Gabrielle Bellot<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Writer
\nLiterary Hub<\/em><\/p>\n

Danzy Senna, New People, A Novel<\/em><\/a> (New York: Riverhead, 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n

IN LONDON IN JULY, at the dawn of a new century, W. E. B. Du Bois<\/a> spoke in front the Pan-African Conference about the challenges of the era to come. \u201c[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century,\u201d he said, in a statement that would later appear in and come to define his epochal collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk<\/em><\/a>, \u201cis the problem of the color-line.\u201d The idea of describing American antiblack racial segregation by the simple, if not even deceptively charming, term color-line, had appeared two decades earlier in the title of Frederick Douglass\u2019s<\/a> 1881 essay, \u201cThe Color Line,\u201d but it would come to be associated particularly with The Souls of Black Folk<\/em>. So seductive was the phrase for Du Bois that he used it two more times to bookend an essay in the book, \u201cOf the Dawn of Freedom,\u201d but it was, of course, more than a memorable line. The color-line was as explicit as it was psychic, delineated in signs, denials, and public executions as much as it was in one\u2019s choice of path, one\u2019s footfalls, one\u2019s bones and dreams. Racism is merely obvious when it becomes visible; its potential existence follows us, invisibly and phantasmally, when we\u2019ve come to expect it…<\/p>\n

The problem of the 21st century in the United States<\/a> is still the color-line, a line that extends back into prior centuries. This is the age of identity \u2014 as all ages have been, really, but the very notions of what it means to have an identity or to be something are now, more than ever, at the fore. But even as we have blurred racial lines in ways scarcely imaginable when The Souls of Black Folk<\/em> appeared in 1903, we still have our clear-cut demarcations. And in many ways, lines of color, alongside the complexities of what it means to pass as one thing or another, may be what best defines Danzy Senna\u2019s<\/a> epochal \u2014 in its most literal sense \u2014 new novel, New People<\/em><\/a>. Du Bois is not an explicit presence in the novel, yet his thematic and political concerns \u2014 updated, as it were, for this new era \u2014 haunt New People. These themes of passing and racial demarcations informed Senna\u2019s first novel, Caucasia<\/em><\/a>, as well. New People<\/em> also explores an idea common in Percival Everett\u2019s fiction \u2014 the two, incidentally, are married \u2014 of reclaiming and repackaging racial stereotypes as a person of color…<\/p>\n

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

But even as we have blurred racial lines in ways scarcely imaginable when “The Souls of Black Folk” appeared in 1903, we still have our clear-cut demarcations. And in many ways, lines of color, alongside the complexities of what it means to pass as one thing or another, may be what best defines Danzy Senna\u2019s epochal \u2014 in its most literal sense \u2014 new novel, “New People.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,6462,20],"tags":[1340,27052,27947,14582],"class_list":["post-55577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-danzy-senna","tag-gabrielle-bellot","tag-la-review-of-books","tag-los-angeles-review-of-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55577","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=55577"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55580,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55577\/revisions\/55580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}