Looking in and looking out for others: Reading and writing race in American literature

In this dissertation, I examine the ways writers cross racial boundaries to adopt an "other" perspective. I look at the racial staging and ventriloquism inherent in Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" and Charles Chesnutt's "The Goophered Grapevine." Eudora Welty's "Powerhouse" provides many opportunities to study issues of race and performance. I also include Zora Neale Hurston's relatively unknown novel Seraph on the Suwanee in which she writes from the perspective of a poor white woman. I especially focus on the instances where Hurston, through this white character, describes the surrounding black community. Toni Morrison adopts a similar perspective in her story "Recitatif," and I study the ways her black character's narrative speaks through her white character's narrative. Ruth Stone's poems about encounters with otherness and the moments when she sees her own life reflected in theirs allowed me to examine reflexivity further, especially the artist's relation to what appears to be "other." All of these texts have metafictional qualities and there are many situations that reflect the writer/reader relationship. These writers challenge their readers to read beyond race by daring to write outside of themselves. By masking their own racial identities, each finds ways of challenging fixed racist mentalities---not only in the text, but beyond the text.; These writers introduce readers to different dramas that concern history and race, and implicate their readers in their presentations of these dramas. Each strives, in one way or another, to reveal the humanity behind the mask of otherness. As readers, we must also strive to understand the inherent complexities within representations of race in order to reflect upon this humanity that exists behind the masks in our experience. Melville and Welty's readers must contend with Babo's disembodied "hive of subtlety" staring out of the text and with Powerhouse's grimace at the end of his performance. Jeff's face continues to peer through the screened porch in Hurston's novel while Julius's conjuring continues to work its way into the reader's consciousness in Chesnutt's story. Morrison's Maggie becomes a text upon which we write our own interpretations, much like Stone's "Other" who stares back through her face in the train window. Melville, Chesnutt, Welty Hurston, Morrison and Stone create real worlds in which we locate ourselves, mirroring the dramas we contend with in our own realities.