This provocative book examines the representation of characters of mixedAfrican and European descent in the works of African American and European Americanwriters of the 19th century. The importance of mulatto figures as agents ofideological exchange in the American literary tradition has yet to receive sustainedcritical attention. Going beyond Sterling Brown's melodramatic stereotype of themulatto as "tragic figure," Cassandra Jackson's close study of nine worksof fiction shows how the mulatto trope reveals the social, cultural, and politicalideas of the period. Jackson uncovers a vigorous discussion in 19th-century fictionabout the role of racial ideology in the creation of an American identity. Sheanalyzes the themes of race-mixing, the "mulatto," nation building, andthe social fluidity of race (and its imagined biological rigidity) in novels byJames Fenimore Cooper, Richard Hildreth, Lydia Maria Child, Frances E. W. Harper, Thomas Detter, George Washington Cable, and CharlesChesnutt.
Blacks in the Diaspora -- Claude A. Clegg III, editor
Darlene Clark Hine, David Barry Gaspar, and John McCluskey, foundingeditors