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The mixed-race girl’s guide to the art of passing: racial simulations in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia and Nella Larsen’s QuicksandUnknown Date (has links)
Racial identifications are continually influenced by and constructed through
one’s environment. Building on Jean Baudrillard’s “The Precession of Simulacra” and
Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, this thesis argues that houses and clothing are
the material objects that allow characters Birdie Lee from Danzy Senna’s Caucasia and
Helga Crane from Nella Larsen’s Quicksand to construct their mixed race identities.
Birdie Lee’s childhood home is the place where she develops a mixed race identity.
When she leaves that home, she is forced to take on simulacra in order to pass for white.
Without a stable childhood or adult home, Helga Crane’s wardrobe becomes the space
where she unconsciously develops a mixed race identity. Her clothing choices allow her
to simulate an entirely black identity that masks her mixed race heritage. Ultimately, the
fates of Birdie and Helga are determined by whether or not they can occupy a space that
is accepting of their mixed race identities. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
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The Sociopolitical Construction Of Race And Literary Representations Of The Biracial SubjectFontenot, Kara 01 January 2006 (has links)
Twentieth-century American literature incorporates interracial and biracial themes that bring to light the often unnamed and unrecognized biracial identities of many Americans. Unfortunately, despite the potential value for a deeper understanding of the construction of race, these themes have seldom been seriously considered in the context of reevaluating the nature of the system that creates racial labels and categories until the recent emergence of postmodern critical theories. This thesis examines the black-white interracial themes and biracial protagonists in Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998) in order to explore the texts' representations of systems of hegemonic power that create racial labels and categories. I discuss the binary sociopolitical construction of race in the United States (blackwhite) and the complexity of biracial identities as a foundation for my examination of literary representations of biracial subjectivity, racial passing, primitive exoticism, and the intersections between race, class and gender. I conclude that a study of the interracial theme in literature is a dive into the chasm between margin and center, the enunciative split between the binary racial signifiers black and white. Therefore, representations of biracial subjectivity provide a unique vantage point for surveillance of the complexities of the human struggle to gain and maintain power.
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