Monthly Archives: January 2014

Saleem Sinai

This entry was posted in Midnight's Children and tagged Indian male white on by

midnightschildren

Character: Saleem Sinai

Source Text:  Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Random House, 2006. .

Entry Author: Shalyn Hopley

 

Saleem Sinai is the illegitimate son of William Methwold, a white British officer, and Vanita, a poor Indian street performer’s wife. However, Saleem is born at the same moment as Shiva, the son of Amhed and Amina Sinai, a wealthy Kashmiri family moved to Bombay. Shiva and Saleem are switched at birth by Mary Pereira, and Saleem is raised as the Sinai’s son without them knowing. Saleem is the protagonist and narrator of Midnight’s Children yet his birth and the revelation of his mixed race heritage do not occur until about a fifth of the way through the book. The beginning portion of his story is spent describing his family history. Yet with Saleem’s birth, the audience discovers that this history is not that of his biological family but that of his unwitting adoptive family. Rather than tell the story of his poor Indian mother, his colonizing British father, and their extra-marital affair, he has chosen to tell the story of his Kashmiri family. Saleem interestingly acknowledges his mixed-race heritage and gives it a significant place in the story, including its revelation during one of the turning points of the novel—his birth, which coincides with the partition of Indian and Indian independence (132); still while acknowledging his mixed race parentage, he is privileging a monoracial identity and even discounting the significance of his parentage saying “…there’s something more important than that. It’s this: when we eventually discovered the crime of Mary Pereira, we all found that it made no difference! I was still their son:  they remained my parents.” (131).Saleem’s mixed birth however cannot be so easily discounted in the significance to the story. Saleem’s status as a mixed race character and child who not truly his parent’s child is symbolic of the status of India at the time of his birth. He is the result of colonization, and evidence of an Indian divided by foreign powers who are on their way out. He speaks of himself and the other midnight’s children, “children were being born who were only partially the offspring of their parents—the children of midnight where also the children of the time:  fathered, you understand, by history.” Saleem, and his mixed heritage, becomes central to Rushdie’s allegorical tale of Indian independence.Saleem and his fellow Midnight’s children usher in a new period in India’s history, and in the novel, are granted with special abilities which destine them to stand out in both society and history. Much of Saleem’s personal history is interwoven with Indian history, his action being key to some of the wars in India. Eventually, his existence and that of his cohorts becomes central to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. She declares the state of Emergency to imprison and sterilize the midnight’s children, draining them not only of their reproductive abilities but their magical abilities and their hope (505). Her actions are tinged with a dark history of sterilizing the racial other, the undesirable elements of society so they and their progeny can no longer contribute to society. The power of the midnight’s children is intrinsically tied to their ability to reproduce, and so without powers and their ability to have children, they cannot affect the story of India. No longer connected to history, Saleem begins to fall apart, supposedly literally disintegrating at the young age of thirty-one.

Niki

This entry was posted in A Pale View of the Hills and tagged female Japanese on by

paleview

Character: Niki

Source Text:  RIshiguro, Kazuo. A Pale View of Hills. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Print.

Entry Author: Victoria Patlajan

 

 “For paradoxically it was he who wanted to give her (Niki) a Japanese name, and I—perhaps out of some selfish desire not to be reminded of the past—insisted on an English one. He finally agreed to Niki, thinking it has some vague echo of the East about it.” (9)

“Keiko, unlike Niki, was pure Japanese…” (10)

Niki is the second daughter of the Japanese main character and narrator Etsuko, fathered by her English husband. Niki’s mixed race, out-going personality, and her western influences serve as a foil to Keiko, Etsuko’s first daughter, who is fully Japanese and is seen as reclusive and aloof. Keiko commits suicide before the start of the novel, and the story revolves around the interactions between Etsuko and Niki after Keiko’s death, reflections on Keiko’s life, as well as Etsuko’s storytelling of Sachiko and Mariko—a mother-daughter pair in Japan who lives serve as a parallel between Etsuko and Keiko.

At the start of the novel, readers are given implicit references of Niki’s mixed-race heritage through descriptions of family dynamics, yet her brusque personality aligns more with western traditions rather than her Japanese lineage. While many mixed-race characters struggle between the two worlds of their races, Niki seems to drop her Asian background for a more “white-oriented” life, though Etsuko attempts to demonstrate Japanese life through Sachiko and Mariko’s story. Niki’s character seems to have much more urban, western qualities that Etsuko criticizes, such as Niki’s fast-paced walking, where Etsuko says ‘Niki, one supposes, has yet to learn the pleasures of walking for its own sake” (47) . Niki is also argued to be more selfish and “You mean you didn’t come to her funeral because she didn’t come to your father’s? Don’t be so childish, Niki” (52), though Niki retorts with explaining that Keiko was never truly part of their family due to her lack of involvement. While her child-like reactions aren’t necessarily “western”, Niki does not seem to have a grasp of her Japanese culture. While Etsuko attempts to show life in Japan through her storytelling to Niki, it is not clear if this truly changes Niki’s perspective of her lineage.

Interestingly, while the physical appearances of Niki and Keiko are not explicitly described in the story, they are shown as looking strikingly similar to one another, despite their different fathers and races. In an uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Waters, a family acquaintance, actually mistakes Niki for her late sister Keiko, saying “’Why hello, Keiko’—she touched Niki’s sleeve—‘I did not realize it was you’” (50). While Niki politely corrects Mrs. Water’s mistake—though without telling her of the suicide of her sister—this one and only physical description is powerful in that readers can understand that, physically, Niki must still look clearly Japanese, and may be subject to any societal constructs and judgments that Asians must deal with, even if they aren’t explicitly noted in the novel.

Antoinette Cosway

This entry was posted in Wide Sargasso Sea and tagged Creole female white on by

cosway

Character: Antoinette Cosway

Source Text:  Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1998. Print. Norton Critical Edition.

Entry Author: Lauren Cyr

Antoinette Cosway’s mixed race serves the purpose of alienating her from her peers, and contributes to her eventual confinement in the end of the novel.  Antoinette’s father, a white man from England named Alexander, was a former slave owner who ran a plantation in Jamaica.  He fathered many other illegitimate children with his slaves.  Antoinette’s mother is a creole woman from Martinique, living on the Jamaican plantation with Alexander.

Antoinette and her mother are unable to fit in with the other white people in Jamaica.  This is due to the fact that they are from Martinique originally, a French colony, rather than the Jamaican English colony.  Antoinette is, however, also unable to relate to the non-white villagers as well.  The villagers refer to Antoinette as “white cockroach,” in reference to her creole/white race.   Antoinette is also the daughter of a former plantation owner; her class sets her apart from the other slaves.

Antoinette’s European heritage puts her into contact with her eventual husband, Mr. Rochester, a white man from England.  He comes to Jamaica in order to marry Antoinette.  He continually tries to subdue the Creole side of her, which he associates with madness.  For example, he decides to rename Antoinette (her mother’s Creole name) “Bertha,” a more English sounding one.

In addition to changing her name, Rochester also seeks to change Antoinette’s language, further fragmenting her identity. Antoinette’s language contains remnants of her Creole heritage, a heritage that Rochester believes to be inferior. When Antoinette speaks to him, Rochester is reminded of her “inferior” background. To him, not only is Antoinette Creole, she is also the wrong type of Creole. When Antoinette speaks, she does so by “chattering in patois,” the patios a blend of the language of the colonizing with the colonized.  Antoinette’s heritage stems from Martinique, a country colonized by the French.  Thus her language is a combination of French and a native tongue, twice removed from Rochester’s English.

Rochester devises a plan to move Antoinette to England, in order to further suppress her Creole heritage.  In a move that symbolizes the influence of white English men over the Caribbean people, Rochester takes ultimate control of Antoinette by locking her in attic for the rest of her life.  He sees Antoinette as a source of madness, and hopes that by locking her away in England, he will be able to put her aside and forget about her. Antoinette is rejected by the blacks on the island for being too white, and by her husband for being too Creole.  Her fragmented identity and struggle for finding a sense of place leads to her eventual madness at the end of the novel.

Harry Potter

This entry was posted in Harry Potter and tagged Indian male white on by

harrypotter

Character: Harry Potter

Source Text:  Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter Series. New York: Scholastic, 1998-2007. Print.

Entry Author: Jessica Davis

Harry James Potter holds half-blood status in Rowling’s imagined wizarding world because his mother is Muggle-born and his father is pure-blood. There are three main blood statuses; pure-blood, half-blood, and Muggle-born, which are all methods of determining a witch or wizard’s magical lineage. Pure-blood status is kept by only marrying other pure-bloods, Muggle-borns are the magical product of two Muggle parents, and half-bloods are any mixture of Muggle-born and pure-blood parents. This can be a pure-blood or half-blood witch or wizard procreating with a half-blood, Muggle-born, or Muggle. Blood status (like race) has nothing to do with magical ability, but is a long-lasting prejudice by the self-appointed superiority of pure-bloods. Many pure-blood witches and wizards intermarry within the series to keep their status “pure” and many lie about their status, claiming complete purity of their family tree. Harry possesses impressive magical abilities, proving that his half-blood status has no correlations with magical ability.The significance of Harry’s half-blood status is his middleman position between the Muggle and wizarding worlds. The first ten years of Harry’s life were spent growing up with his magic-hating aunt and uncle in the muggle world, which allows him Muggle world knowledge when he goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but also an innate comfort and belonging in the wizarding world. Harry’s half-blood status also keeps him balanced between his two best friends, Ron Weasley, who is of pure-blood status, and Hermione Granger, who is a Muggle-born witch, and top student in the school. During Rowling’s second novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, we uncover some of the story’s underlining racism through Draco Malfoy’s inappropriate slur towards Hermione.

“Mudblood is a really foul name for someone who was Muggle-born – you know, non-magical parents. There are some wizards – like Malfoy’s family – who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re what people call pure-blood… I mean, the rest of us know it doesn’t make any difference at all” (Rowling, Chamber of Secrets, 89).

Mudblood is a sort of racial term describing a witch or wizard born to two muggle parents, describing their blood as filthy.

One of the most profound advocates for equal rights of blood status, is Albus Dumbledore. He is a constant reminder in the series to treat people equally, and never judge them based on where they come from or what they may be.

“You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!” (Rowling, Goblet of Fire, 708).

This sort of stance is what Rowling is trying to teach her readers that differences mean nothing to those with open minds and a willingness to accept others. The pureness of a witch or wizard’s blood is thought to keep magical ability within magical families, but magic can be passed down even through muggle families.

Ironically, Harry’s half-blood status is one of the greatest plot movers, since Lord Voldemort uses this fact to choose Harry as his eventual downfall, due to a prophecy. The choice is between Harry the half-blood, and Neville Longbottom, a pure-blood schoolmate of Harry’s. It is believed that Lord Voldemort chooses Harry because his half-blood status is closest to Lord Voldemort’s half-blood status. This choice drives the whole novel from beginning to end, with the underlying message of tolerance towards others and social discrimination.

Lila Mae Watson

This entry was posted in The Intuitionist and tagged black female light-skinned on by

theIntuitionist.png
Character: Lila Mae Watson

Source Text:  Whitehead, Colson. The Intuitionist.  New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print.

Entry Author: James Tyler

It is unclear at the outset as to whether Lila Mae Watson is half-black, or as to whether her skin tone enables her to obtain a greater form of acceptance from her white colleagues, or to “pass.” Colson Whitehead chooses to focus marginally on Lila Mae’s relations with her father, who was black and who taught her “white folks can turn on you any minute,” but little mention is made of her mother (Whitehead 23). Although it is made clear that they occupied the same house, when Lila Mae recalls her elevator repairman father showing her and her mother his uniform, it is never made clear as to whether her mother might have been half-black. Aesthetically, Lila Mae exemplifies a “mixed-race” paradigm by her acceptance within a political minority, “the Intuitionists.” Within this political minority, she holds the unique and isolated status as the only black woman “Intuitionist.”

Watson finds herself within a racial identity equation of James Fulton and Pompey, both African American characters who choose to “pass” within white society, although Fulton’s identity is not made clear until well into the novel’s climax. As such, Lila Mae leads a lonely existence in the dark, with few African American role models other than Pompey, who is a conformist, and who appeases the white community, because success as an elevator inspector will ensure a better life for his family. Lila Mae is more determined and more of an individual, even if she has the capacity to be self-centered. She remains focused in the face of obstacles, and openly questions her culpability in the failed elevator inspection, rightfully insistent that there is something more to this situation and embarking on a “quest” to uncover the details in relation to the accident, and, in effect, finds herself discovering more about her own racial identity in the process. Effectively, Colson Whitehead inserts Lila Mae within the context of one of the oldest literary traditions, the “Quest” narrative, a narrative also ascribed to Danny in Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and Lila Mae’s literary ancestor, Janie Mae Crawford, in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

On this “quest,” Lila Mae is undeterred and un-intimidated when thugs invade her apartment, when she uncovers the deception of Natchez’s, and certainly when Chancre’s cohorts kidnap her. Still, Watson is compliant to a degree. She calmly accepts her Inspectors Academy room, a converted janitor’s closet. She is excruciatingly polite, even when under pressure, and she dresses conservatively and neatly, clearly invested in not doing anything to offend the sensibilities of a predominately white environment, and fully aware of the significance of her role as a black woman elevator inspector. Like Conrad’s Jewel in Lord Jim, Lila Mae is objectified by those around her; but while Jewel is objectified in a conventional sense, Lila Mae is utilized shamelessly by the Intuitionists for political gain, as proof of their diverse credentials, in contrast with the more conservative Empiricists. Lila Mae is an invaluable political tool as the only female, black elevator inspector, who just happens to be an Intuitionist. As such, whether or not she is willing to admit it or assume kinship with Pompey, she, in effect, is “passing” to a degree, as well.This is where her resemblance to James Fulton, the figurative father of Intuitionism, is most crucial. Both Lila Mae and James Fulton emerge as essential to the novel’s message, and are intrinsically linked to the novel’s theme of social advancement in the context of identity politics. Both hail from a period in which the only African Americans allowed in the department store were employees, although Fulton had more direct experience. James Fulton, a light-skinned black man, plagued by the necessity of “passing” racially, singles out Lila Mae Watson out in his private journals for a significant role within the Intuitionists. This leads one to wonder exactly to what degree he empathized with Lila Mae Watson. “He notices he has written Lila Mae is the one in the margins of his notebook,” Whitehead writes. “That’s right… She doesn’t know what she’s in for, he thinks, dismissing her from his mind” (Whitehead 253).


Danny

This entry was posted in Tortilla Flat and tagged Caucasian Indian male Mexican Spanish on by

tortillaflat
Character: Danny 

Source Text:  Steinbeck, John. Tortilla Flat. 1935. New York: Penguin Books, 1963. Print.

Entry Author: James Tyler

In The Grapes of Wrath, Mexicans only warrant vague mention as a massive throng of scabs threatening the prospects of Californian farmers and Midwestern migrant workers (Owens, 60). John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, a novella based on a Medieval Mexican folktale, presents its two main characters, Kino and Juana, more as symbolic victims of circumstance than as introspective human beings exhibiting any control over their situation. Despite the fact that a majority of John Steinbeck’s novels are set in California, one familiar with his work could very well argue that Steinbeck’s literature offers few complex Mexican-American characters.  A refutation to this argument would inevitably have to include a discussion of Tortilla Flat (1935). In this variation on the Legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Tortilla Flat’s hero, Danny, outwardly emerges as the level-headed voice of reason and authority figure; in effect, the “King Arthur” figure of the “Paisanos.” A “Paisano” is defined by Steinbeck as “a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods. His ancestors have lived in California for a hundred or two [hundred] years. He speaks English with a Paisano accent and Spanish with a Paisano accent” (Steinbeck 2). Like the other “Paisanos” of Tortilla Flat in Monterey, California, Danny is of Mexican-Anglo-Indian descent, described as “related to nearly everyone in the flat by blood or romance” (Steinbeck 3). Danny’s willingness to open his doors to the other “Paisanos,” when he inherits two houses from his grandfather, establishes him as the unofficial leader of this racially mixed group.

As such, Danny emerges as the focal point of the story and the calm center around which the comparatively more colorful Pilon, Pablo, and Big Joe, revolve. Unlike the stereotypical authority figure, however, Danny is unhappy with this arrangement. He hails from wealth, but is entirely unenthused with the finery of “influential relatives,” choosing to live as a “vagrant wresting his food and wine from an unwilling world” (Steinbeck 3). Burdened with the responsibility of managing not one, but two houses, Danny is obligated to abandon these vagabond ways in favor of focusing on property management and fiscal responsibility. He seethes with frustration for a month, before disappearing from the house and embarking on a crime spree, or a “quest,” if you will, leaving the town of Tortilla Flat in almost complete disarray. Upon the realization that this act has not changed his situation, he grows disillusioned and descends into alcoholism. Danny’s friends’ best attempts to help him fail, and most spectacularly with a party in his honor. Danny descends into madness and throws himself to his doom after erupting into hysterical fits of violent anger, likely induced by heavy drinking.

The source of Danny’s rage is ambiguous and Steinbeck dances around the legitimate cause of Danny’s almost quixotic disillusionment with life, choosing to assign its origins to a populist yearning for independence from legitimate responsibility. But, could Danny really have exhibited a difficulty adjusting to civilian life and finding his identity following his WWI service? According to historian Gregory Rodriguez, WWI “accelerated assimilation” for the Mexican community, and “some soldiers returned home having experienced prejudice at the hands of Anglo officers” (Rodriguez 154). If Danny’s anger is motivated by a latent insecurity over his racial identity, it is unclear. Nonetheless, Steinbeck establishes Danny’s racial identity enigma almost from the start, when he describes the Protagonist’s behavior when asked about his race. “Whenever [Danny is] questioned concerning his race, he indignantly claims pure Spanish blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm is nearly white” (Steinbeck 2).  Described as “dark and intent” with a skin color like “a well-browned meerschaum pipe,” Danny attributes his complexion to sunburns, vehemently denying any mixed ancestry (Steinbeck 3).  Interestingly enough, Danny is not above his own racial antipathy towards the very Caucasians he tries to claim kinship with. Upon learning of his new inheritance, he chooses to target Italian fishermen by assailing them with ethnic slurs. “Race antipathy overcame Danny’s good sense. He menaced the fishermen. ‘Sicilian bastards,’ he called them, and ‘Scum from the prison-island,’ and ‘Dogs of dogs of dogs.’ He cried, ‘Chinga tu madre, Piojo.’ He thumbed his nose and made obscene gestures below his waist” (Steinbeck 6). Although the Italians hardly take his mockery seriously in the least, with an identity crisis of this magnitude, it is no wonder that Danny eventually was goaded into virtually losing contact with reality. Although Steinbeck does not attribute it to Danny’s descent into madness, neither does he absolve his inner conflict over racial identity from complicity in Danny’s Arthurian fall from grace.

Hiro Protagonist

This entry was posted in Snow Crash and tagged black Korean male on by

 

snowcrashCharacter: Hiro Protagonist

Source Text:  Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Print.

Entry Author: Erin O’Kelly

Stephenson’s character Hiro is half-American Black, half-Korean, and all protagonist. A talented programmer and hacker, Hiro is instrumental to the world of the story even before its events drag him into an informational intrigue, having helped to create and develop the immersive Internet equivalent known in the novel as the Metaverse. When the story opens he’s working a high-risk, low-pay job as a futuristic pizza deliveryman, but that quickly comes to a crashing halt when he crashes the Mafia-owned delivery car, sending him back to his backup job as a freelance information-gatherer. Soon he is embroiled in a high-tech struggle for a new sort of infoweapon that his unorthodox hacker past has made him well-prepared to deal with.

 

While his ability to deal with the plot twists leading up to the final showdown is not predicated on his race, the course of the story makes several turns that do rely on racially charged events to get from plot point A to plot point B to plot point Z.Hiro’s role in the novel covers everything from gathering information to protecting himself and others to chopping people up with swords and, interestingly, his mixed heritage makes subtle but important contributions in all of those areas. He uses his heritage as an American Black to make get the social results he wants in some situations, like when he forces a confrontation with a Japanese pop star to make sure that a concert he organized goes on as planned: “What the hell. This is America, Hiro is American, and there’s no reason to take this politeness thing to an unhealthy extreme” (Stephenson 132). Similarly, in the novel’s world of racially-specific closed-gate communities, a type of franchise called “burbclaves”, his Korean ancestry gives him an in to the city-franchise Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong. Without that access to the refuge of a Greater Hong Kong that his citizenship affords him, he and one of the other main characters, YT, would have likely been taken out of commission in the first hundred pages by a bunch of angry taxi drivers; later on, his ability to access the Asian-centric franchise saves him from getting shot by a bunch of Russian gunmen. His ability to bring YT into this otherwise off-limits sphere of influence also advances the plot by setting the stage for a later karmatic payback for an act of kindness performed during her stay.

The attention his mixed heritage attracts is not entirely benign, however, and also singles him out as a target for curiosity and animosity. Many people are unable to peg his ethnic background, and others’ misinterpretations spark conflict. One Japanese businessman who thinks his black heritage should deny him the use of his inherited Japanese swords challenges his honor and right to hold the weapons (Stephenson 85). A later scene makes him a target for racists who aren’t sure what his heritage is, exactly, but know they don’t like it and can’t figure out which epithet to call him (Stephenson 301). Despite this, a majority of the attention paid to Hiro’s heritage is narrative, not part of any dialogue.  Although the reader is up-to-date on the matter, Hiro doesn’t usually bother to correct the person doing the mislabeling. He simply continues doing what he always does: making effective uses of both sides of his heritage to accomplish what he wants or needs to do, and saving a good chunk of the world in the process.

Khan Noonien Singh

This entry was posted in Star Trek and tagged male multi-racial on by

 

spaceseedCharacter: Khan Noonien Singh 

Source Text:  “Space Seed.” Star Trek: The Original Series. Writ. Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber. Dir. Mark Daniels. NBC. 1967.

Entry Author: Emma Baker

Perhaps the most memorable or well-known villain of Star Trek: The Original Series, Khan Noonien Singh is a genetically engineered and selectively bred man intended to possess superhuman powers, both physical and mental. Also known as an “augment,” Khan results from an experiment enacted by several scientists on Earth during the 1990s. However, these scientists did not account for the idea that, “superior ability breeds superior ambition,” (“Space Seed”) and many of the augments began to seize control of over 40 different nations. Kirk says on the subject, “an improved breed of human. That’s what the Eugenics War was all about.” (“Space Seed”) Khan, who controlled one third of the earth, from Asia to the Middle East, was the “best of the tyrants,” under his rule there were no massacres, he did not initiate any fights. While Spock found him morally reprehensible and only deserving of scorn, many humans on board expressed an admiration of his strength and abilities while still disapproving of his actions. They consider Khan, “the best of the tyrants and the most dangerous.” (“Space Seed”) He attempts to take over the Enterprise with his augmented crew with the intention of finding a new planet to conquer and almost succeeds with the compliance of Lieutenant McGivers, a white woman, who falls in love with him.  In the end, instead of bringing him to Starfleet, James T. Kirk exiles him and his crew to a planet where they can begin to colonize themselves reflecting the penal colony on Australia, Botany Bay. Later, Khan goes on to be the antagonist of The Wrath of Khan, often considered the best Star Trek movie with the cast of the original series.These “augments” were created from a variety of Earth’s ethnic groups. In the episode, “Space Seed,” Scotty says, “they’re all mixed types–Western, Mid-European, Latin, Oriental.” (“Space Seed”) On the first sight of Khan, the historian Lieutenant McGivers suggests he hails, “From the Northern India area I’d guess, probably a Sikh,” perhaps in an expression of Orientalist anxieties. Though little textual evidence points toward these augments as of a mixture of several different ethnic groups within each individual, rumors among some fan understanding suggest that Khan himself is a mixture of several races, perhaps the end result if all races were mixed. The concept revolves around the beneficial combination of several different ethnic groups to create superhumans that share the best aspects of all races and culminates in the most prominent of the augments, a man who is not white.As such, Khan’s role both challenges and maintains the status quo. A non-white person presented as the superhuman product of the genetic engineering and selective breeding remains rare even in modern day media. In the 1960s, it was arguably revolutionary. The rumor of not only the inclusion many different ethnic groups in genetic engineering but perhaps the explicit mixing also challenges a status quo concerned with historical intents of eugenics movements. Instead of the preservation of a “pure” race revolving around white supremacy, this experiment produced superhumans of all races and the potential of mixed races. Interestingly, the seeds of constructing mixed race as a herald of modernity and a post-race society are recognizable in this interpretation.

Golden Gray (2nd exhibit)

This entry was posted in Jazz and tagged bi-racial black male white on by

jazz_cover2Character: Golden Gray

Source Text:  Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004.

Entry Author:

The majority of Jazz’s narrative takes place in a lower class African American community in Harlem during the 1920s. The plot centers on the violent love triangle formed when Joe, married to Violet, began an affair with a young girl named Dorcas. However, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th century American South. The novel introduces Golden Gray, the son of a rich white Aristocratic woman, Vera Louise, and her family’s African American slave, Henry LesTroy. He unites the past of Violet and Joe: He was raised by Violet’s grandmother, True Belle, and as an adult saved Joe’s mother while searching for his father, Henry.The narrator connects the anxiety Vera Louise’s father experiences upon discovering his daughter’s pregnancy by a slave to the fact of there being seven mulatto children on the plantation. Those mulatto children represent the unspoken, yet well known secret about the transgressions in Southern society wherein white male slave owners had sexual relations with their black female slaves, creating mixed race generations. The anxiety stems from the possibility that Gray’s mother would’ve unknowingly committed incest with one of her half siblings, who was born to one of the female slaves.

Gray’s racial identity threatens the structure of the society because his racial mix is identical to those born as slaves to African American mothers, and yet his mother’s racial identity directly connects him to the supposedly elite white family. Golden Gray brings up interesting questions: by law he could be a slave, but his upbringing has created permanent features in his way of carrying himself that translates into whiteness.

Superficial aspects of his appearance create a thin veil hiding his identity. His mother would have regretted him just as she did her affair and given him away if not for his “golden” aspect.

“When [they] bathed him they sometimes passed anxious looks at the palms of his hand, the texture of his drying hair. … True Belle just smiled, and now he knew what she was smiling about, the nigger. But so was he. He had always thought there was only one kind – True Belle’s kind. Black and nothing. Like Henry LesTroy. Like the filthy woman snoring on the cot. But there was another kind – like himself,” (149).

When Gray confronts his father, he seems to project on him all the anxieties and the cognitive dissonance and desires that his newfound knowledge burdens him with. Lestroy narrows in on his fears and confronts him by saying, “‘I know what you came for. To see how black I was. You thought you was white, didn’t you?’” Lestroy offers him ways to be comfortable with his identity and Gray retorts, “’I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.’” He is sensitive to the psychological impact of the categorization even though the reality is the same for him.  Lestroy replies, “‘Be what you want – white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up – quicklike, and don’t bring me no whiteboy sass,’” (173).

Morrison takes care to note that Gray’s torn identity comes not only from the mix of his race alone, but from the way it locates him in between classes and races, making his full membership/authenticity in either group contested.

“What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture,” (160).

The reality is that he can choose which race he performs, but the knowledge of his parentage has made him confront the reality that race is a performance. Gray’s crisis results from having become a self-conscious actor in this broadened playing field of racial identity. Being aware of his choice and the fiction of race, but still afloat in the world of identity politics, he no longer feels naturalized in the choice of either identity.

Bertha Mason

This entry was posted in Jane Eyre and tagged Creole female on by
janeeyreCharacter: Bertha Mason

Source Text:  Brontë, Charlotte. “Jane Eyre.” Introduction and Notes. Ed. Stevie Davies. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.

Entry Author:  Crystal Carpenter

Bertha Antoinetta Mason is the mysterious and problematic character placed in Rochester’s and Jane’s life to provide shock value and growth to the progression of the storyline. Bertha’s purpose was to be set apart from Jane in intellect, appearance, delicateness, and sanity, because Brontë uses her as ‘a throw away’ character to cause a distraction as a way to hit a certain romantic climax between Jane and Rochester. Bertha is chained and bound to the assumptions of her culture, in that she is physically locked away and verbally abused because of her mixed race. Words like beast, strange wild animal, dark, grizzled hair, wild mane, hyena, maniac, purple face, and bloated features are used to define BerthaBronte’s representation of Bertha…develops two lines of argument: that Bertha is “imagined as white – or as passing as white – In the novel’s retrospective narrative,” and that she “become[s] black” in “the form in which she becomes visible in the novel.” That form, she argues, is marked by racial stereotypes of the “non-white” (Thomas 1).Bertha is forced to play a role in the degradation of her lineage without her side of the story ever being told. The reader accepts how Bertha is described by Rochester – “Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard! …Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points” (Brontë 337) – as truth because being a white wealthy aristocrat gentleman is perceived as credible; and the reader wants Jane and Rochester’s romance to flourish.

Bertha is left without a voice and in place of it is a growl. Her character depicts the masculine nocturnal beast that wanders Thornfield Hall at night and hides during the day. Bertha has a brother, Richard Mason, who is never depicted in any way as beast like. He is treated like an English gentleman, which is interesting because he comes from the same family line as Bertha. Brontë is making a reference to how woman are locked away in the domestic sphere, forced to comply with men as the head in the public sphere.

It is, of course, taken from Jane Eyre, where the madwoman, Bertha Mason, is quite literally confined in an attic, but it becomes emblematic of the female subversive desire to challenge all-pervasive patriarchal standards – a desire which can be expressed only through images of irrationality, passion, and imprisonment (Foster 95).

Women writers had no choice but to have multiple undertones within their work. Bertha’s character is compromised for the advancement of feminist’s rights. However, for the sake of the feminist movement Bertha’s race and self-worth is being sacrificed. During the 19th century the progression of white woman was the objective, not woman of color. Bertha is a symbol for many cultures exploited and repressed by the British Empire. Brontë writing Bertha as the “mad woman” represents the fear that the English had if miscegenation was to occur between the British and “other” cultures. Racial lines would be blurred and mixed race children would be the product of imperial reign, which would ruin the racial dominance of the British over their colonies. Brontë locking Bertha away is a way to control and stop further assimilation with the English culture.

Creole: Generally, the term signifies a European native of the West Indies but it can also refer to persons of mixed race or black people (Davies 567).

 

Work cited:

Foster, Shirley. “Monsters and Madwomen – The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer

and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar.”

NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 14.1 (1980): 94-96. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Thomas, Sue. “The Tropical Extravagance of Bertha Mason.” Victorian Literature and Culture

27.1 (1999): 1-17. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.