Eating the Black Body: Miscegenation as Sexual Consumption in African American Literature and Culture

Posted in Anthropology, Books, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Monographs, United States on 2013-09-29 02:56Z by Steven

Eating the Black Body: Miscegenation as Sexual Consumption in African American Literature and Culture

Peter Lang
2006
231 pages
0.340 kg, 0.750 lbs
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-8204-7931-6

Carlyle Van Thompson, Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Education
Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York

In this provocative and original exploration of racial subjugation and its aftermath, Carlyle Van Thompson illumines the racialized sexual desire that reduces Black people to commodities for consumption. Eating the Black Body examines the often-sadistic forms of sexual violence during the period of slavery and its aftermath. By looking at one poem and three novels—Richard Wright’s Between the World and Me, John Oliver Killens’ Youngblood, Gayl Jones’ Corregidora, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred—that examine slavery and the Jim Crow period, Thompson investigates a wide variety of Black bodies as sites of miscegenation and sexual desire. Thompson also examines a horrific case of White male police brutality in New York City in which a Black man was sodomized. Bold and persuasively argued, Eating the Black Body will engage readers in a broad range of literary, historical, and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1: Consuming Hot Black Bodies: Miscegenation as Sexual Violence in African American Literature and Culture
  • Chapter 2: Speaking Desire and Consumption of the Black Body in Richard Wright’s “Between the World and Me”
  • Chapter 3: Miscegenation as Sexual Consumption: The Enduring Legacy of America’s White-Supremacist Culture of Violence in John Oliver Killens’ Youngblood
  • Chapter 4: Miscegenation, Monstrous Memories, and Misogyny as Sexual Consumption in Gayl Jones’ Corregidora
  • Chapter 5: Moving Past the Present: Racialized Sexual Violence and Miscegenous Consumption in Octavia Butler’s Kindred
  • Chapter 6: White Police Penetrating. Probing, and Playing in the Black Man’s Ass: The Sadistic Sodomizing of Abner Louima
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
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“Makin a way Outta no way:” The dangerous business of racial masquerade in Nella Larsen’s Passing

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing on 2013-09-28 18:00Z by Steven

“Makin a way Outta no way:” The dangerous business of racial masquerade in Nella Larsen’s Passing

Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory
Volume 15, Issue 1 (2005)
pages 79-104
DOI: 10.1080/07407700508571489

Carlyle Van Thompson, Acting Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Education
Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York

Early in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), Clare Kendry Bellew and Irene Westover Redfield (the light-skinned and middle-class black female protagonists) are both passing for white in Chicago at an elite and segregated restaurant atop the Drayton Hotel during the horrid heat of August. Here, in this coincidental meeting of two childhood friends, Irene and Clare have a conversation about the possibility of permanently assuming a white identity. Irene, who only passes sometime, superciliously relates her reason for not permanently passing herself off as white: “‘You see Clare, I’ve everything I want. Except, perhaps a little more money'” (1929, 190). in contrast, Clare responds: “‘Of course…that’s what everybody wants just a little more money, even the people who have it. And I must say I don’t blame them. Money’s awful nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, ‘Rene, that it’s even worth the price'” (1929, 190). Larsen reveals that economic security is a critical concern in the lives of these middle-class black women. Despite the vulnerabilities of revelation, Clare adamantly believes that the monetary and social advantages of passing for white surpass the disadvantages. Class, as inflected by gender within the nexus of race, con-…

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The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination

Posted in Books, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Monographs, Passing, United States on 2010-03-23 15:26Z by Steven

The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination

Peter Lang Publishing Group
2004
198 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8204-6206-6

Carlyle Van Thompson, Acting Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Education
Medgar Evers College, the City University of New York

The Tragic Black Buck examines the phenomenon, often paradoxical, of black males passing for white in American literature. Focusing on the first third of the twentieth century, this book argues that black individuals successfully assuming a white identity represent a paradox, in that passing for white exemplifies a challenge to the hegemonic philosophy of biological white supremacy, while denying blackness. Issues of race, gender, skin color, class, and law are examined in the literature of passing, involving the historical, theoretical, and literary tropes of miscegenation, mimicry, and masquerade. The narratives examined in The Tragic Black Buck are Charles Waddell Chesnutt‘s The House Behind the Cedars, James Weldon Johnson‘s The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby, and William Faulkner‘s Light in August.

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