Crossing Black: Mixed-Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture - Hardcover

Dagbovie-Mullins, Sika A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1572339322 ISBN 13: 9781572339323

Publisher: University of Tennessee Press, 2013

Synopsis

The past two decades have seen a growing influx of biracial discourse in fiction, memoir, and theory, and since the 2008 election of Barack Obama to the presidency, debates over whether America has entered a “post-racial” phase have set the media abuzz. In this penetrating and provocative study, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins adds a new dimension to this dialogue as she investigates the ways in which various mixed-race writers and public figures have redefined both “blackness” and “whiteness” by invoking multiple racial identities. <br><br> Focusing on several key novels—Nella Larsen’s <em>Quicksand</em> (1928), Lucinda Roy’s <em>Lady Moses</em> (1998), and Danzy Senna’s <em>Caucasia</em> (1998)—as well as memoirs by Obama, James McBride, and Rebecca Walker and the personae of singer Mariah Carey and actress Halle Berry, Dagbovie-Mullins challenges conventional claims about biracial identification with a concept she calls “black-sentient mixed-race identity.” Whereas some multiracial organisations can <em>diminish</em> blackness by, for example, championing the inclusion of multiple-race options on census forms and similar documents, a black-sentient consciousness stresses a perception rooted in blackness—“a connection to a black consciousness,” writes the author, “that does not overdetermine but still plays a large role in one’s racial identification.” By examining the nuances of this concept through close readings of fiction, memoir, and the public images of mixed-race celebrities, Dagbovie-Mullins demonstrates how a “black-sentient mixed-race identity reconciles the widening separation between black/white mixed race and blackness that has been encouraged by contemporary mixed-race politics and popular culture.” <br><br> A book that promises to spark new debate and thoughtful reconsideration's of an especially timely topic, <em>Crossing B(l)ack</em> recognises and investigates assertions of a black-centred mixed-race identity that does not divorce a premodern racial identity from a postmodern racial fluidity.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

About the Author:

<strong>SIKA A. DAGBOVIE-MULLINS</strong> is associate professor in the Department of English at Florida Atlantic University. Her articles have appeared in <em>African American Review, the Journal of Popular Culture</em>, and other publications.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1572339322
• ISBN 13: 9781572339323
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 150