The Complexities of Identity: Teaching Michelle Cliff’s Abeng to High School Students

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Teaching Resources on 2011-05-02 22:39Z by Steven

The Complexities of Identity: Teaching Michelle Cliff’s Abeng to High School Students

Minnesota English Journal
Volume 45 – Fall 2009
pages 19-33

Angie Iserman, English Teacher
Owatonna High School, Owatonna, Minnesota

When I decided to return to the role of student in order to obtain my graduate degree, my hope was I could bury myself within two genres of literature: adolescent and multicultural. Now, a year later, I have read several books in both genres and consistently find myself grappling with a single theme: identity. This may be due to the fact that both adolescent literature and multicultural literature readily lend themselves to the investigation of this theme, but I believe my fascination with it also stems from my experience as a high school English teacher. So far, much of my teaching career has been spent in classrooms filled with seventh, eighth, and ninth graders, and I have witnessed the struggle of these students to define themselves on a daily basis. Sometimes, it even seems like these students change their identities by the hour.

While changes in identity manifest themselves in students of all cultures, such changes are most easily observed in students who want to belong to two cultural groups at once. In particular, I am reminded of a Muslim student at the school where I teach who comes to school dances in traditional Muslim garb and who subsequently changes into pants as soon as possible after arriving in order to integrate herself into the dominant culture of the American teenager. As if the struggle to define one’s identity during adolescence is not challenging enough, this student must also create an identity for herself while straddling two cultures.

Being more than familiar with the struggle to find one’s identity, I was immediately drawn to the plight of Clare, the biracial protagonist in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng. After being introduced to this novel in one of my graduate courses, I decided to further explore Cliff’s assertion that the survival of a biracial person is dependent upon whether or not this person is able to create an identity for himself/herself. To do this, I investigate the current research on biracial children, the historical context of the novel, and the influences on Clare’s identity. Then, I use the novel itself to suggest biracial people must develop identities for themselves if they are to continue living. Finally, I conclude by discussing the pedagogical implications of studying identity in Abeng and in multicultural literature in general.

Although this comes as no surprise to teachers who are witnessing shifts in the racial and ethnic composition of their classes, Barbara Tizard and Ann Phoenix in their book Black, White or Mixed Race? state that current data indicates “there are a growing number of people in racially mixed relationships and marked increases in the number of people of mixed parentage”. As children with mixed parentages become more common, one must question the impact this will have on their identities. Will such children classify themselves as black, white, or biracial? How will society define them? How will society’s definition of them affect their lives socially, economically, and emotionally? In the past, it was believed people of mixed-race would suffer from an identity crisis. This sentiment is echoed in Black, White, or Mixed Race? when the authors assert: “‘The prevailing view of mixed children is that they have identity problems because of their ambiguous social position… the stereotype of the tortured misfit’”.

However, recent research suggests this notion of mixed-raced children suffering from an identity crisis is fictitious. As Tizard and Phoenix state, “It is now much more commonly recognized than previously that people of ‘mixed parentage’ largely do not suffer from racialised identity problems [. . .]” (54). As evidence of this conclusion, Tizard and Phoenix cite a study which suggests “that up to the age of 9, at any rate, the majority of mixed-parentage children did not suffer from identity problems; she [the researcher] found them to be happy and secure with an intermediate identity”.

Yet, this conclusion seems premature when one considers the works of authors with mixed-race parentage, such as Michelle Cliff. In fact, Cliff undermines recent research’s assertions that biracial children will not fall victim to identity crises when she comments in interviews on the similarities between herself and Abeng’s protagonist Clare. She is quoted as saying, “‘I was a girl similar to Clare and have spent most of my life and most of my work exploring my identity as a light-skinned Jamaican, the privilege and damage that comes from that identity’” (Dagbovie 96). Obviously, Cliff, like Clare, struggles, or struggled, to define herself…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,

Fading to white, fading away: biracial bodies in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, Women on 2010-04-12 03:49Z by Steven

Fading to white, fading away: biracial bodies in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia

African American Review
2006-03-22

Michelle Goldberg

However dissimilar individual bodies are, the compelling idea of common, racially indicative bodily characteristics offers a welcome short-cut into the favored forms of solidarity and connection, even if they are effectively denied by divergent patterns in life chances and everyday experiences.—Paul Gilroy, Against Race

the invisible in me is counter to the visible.—Michelle Cliff, “The Black Woman As Mulatto”

Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1986) and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998) typify a recent literary uptrend: a dramatic increase in biracial fiction, memoir, and theory, in biracial discourses of passing, invisibility, and identity. Abeng, which received widespread critical acclaim, and Caucasia, the winner of numerous 1998 “Best Book” awards, introduce characters whose mixed race parentage holds true for a growing number of multiracial Americans. Both novels offer biracial characters who resist racial labels while staying especially connected to “blackness.” In Abeng and Caucasia, respectively, the white bodies of Clare Savage and Birdie Lee misrepresent identities that remain ascribed to, yet not confined by, “blackness.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , ,