{"id":56796,"date":"2018-08-22T04:27:40","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T04:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56796"},"modified":"2018-08-22T04:27:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T04:27:40","slug":"you-shouldve-seen-my-grandmother-she-passed-for-white-african-american-women-writers-genealogy-and-the-passing-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56796","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYou Should\u2019ve Seen My Grandmother; She Passed for White\u201d: African American Women Writers, Genealogy, and the Passing Genre"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou Should\u2019ve Seen My Grandmother; She Passed for White\u201d: African American Women Writers, Genealogy, and the Passing Genre<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Sheffield
\nOctober 2015<\/p>\n

Janine Bradbury<\/strong><\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Literature; School Learning and Teaching Lead
\nSchool of Humanities, Religion & Philosophy
\nYork St John University, York, United Kingdom<\/em><\/p>\n

Ph.D. Dissertation<\/em><\/p>\n

This thesis critiques the prevailing assumption that passing<\/a> is pass\u00e9 in contemporary African American women\u2019s literature.<\/p>\n

By re-examining the work of Toni Cade Bambara<\/a>, Toni Morrison<\/a>, Gloria Naylor<\/a>, Dorothy West<\/a>, Alice Walker<\/a>, and Barbara Neely<\/a>, I argue that these writers signify on canonical passing narratives \u2013 Brown\u2019s<\/a> Clotel<\/em><\/a> (1853) and Clotelle<\/em> (1867), Chesnutt\u2019s<\/a> The House Behind the Cedars<\/em><\/a> (1900), Johnson\u2019s<\/a> The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man<\/em><\/a> (1912), Larsen\u2019s<\/a> Passing<\/em><\/a> (1929), and Hurst\u2019s<\/a> Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a> (1933) \u2013 in order to confront and redress both the historical roots and contemporary contexts of colourism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As well bridging this historiographic<\/a> gap, I make a case for reading passing as a multivalent trope<\/a> that facilitates this very process of cultural interrogation. Rather than focussing on literal episodes of passing, I consider moments of symbolic, textual, and narrative passing, as well as the genealogical and intertextual processes at play in each text which account for the spectral hauntings of the passing-for-white figure in post-civil rights literature.<\/p>\n

In Chapter 1, I examine the relationship between passing and embodiments of beauty in Morrison\u2019s The Bluest Eye<\/em> (1970), Bambara\u2019s \u201cChristmas Eve at Johnson\u2019s Drugs N Goods\u201d (1974) and Neely\u2019s Blanche Among the Talented Tenth<\/em> (1994).<\/p>\n

In Chapter 2, I discuss passing, class, and capital in Naylor\u2019s Linden Hills<\/em> (1985) and Dorothy West\u2019s The Wedding<\/em> (1995).<\/p>\n

In Chapter 3, I suggest that Walker and Morrison revisit Larsen\u2019s Passing<\/em> in their short stories \u201cSource\u201d (1982) and \u201cRecitatif\u201d (1983).<\/p>\n

Finally, I conclude this project with a discussion of Toni Morrison\u2019s God Help the Child<\/em> (2015) in order to demonstrate the continued centrality of the passing trope for authors interested in colourism, genealogy, and black women\u2019s experiences.<\/p>\n

Embargoed here<\/a> until October 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This thesis critiques the prevailing assumption that passing is pass\u00e9 in contemporary African American women\u2019s literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[838,1196,8,6462,25],"tags":[717,28939,333,897,240,10486,2367,28938,1307,28934,87,10090,1240,28940,482],"class_list":["post-56796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dissertations","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-women","tag-alice-walker","tag-barbara-neely","tag-charles-chesnutt","tag-charles-waddell-chesnutt","tag-colorism","tag-dorothy-west","tag-fannie-hurst","tag-gloria-naylor","tag-james-weldon-johnson","tag-janine-bradbury","tag-nella-larsen","tag-toni-cade-bambara","tag-toni-morrison","tag-university-of-sheffield","tag-william-wells-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56796","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=56796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56799,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56796\/revisions\/56799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}