Mixed Race Studies

Mutants, mudbloods, and futureheroes: Mixed race identity in contemporary narrative

The University of New Mexico
May 2008
327 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3318087
ISBN: 9780549676652

Felecia Rose Caton-Garcia

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States is experiencing the expansion of a self-identified biracial, multiracial, and mixed race citizenry. This work examines the dominant tropes operative in the study of mixed race narrative cultural production, specifically film, fiction, and life-writing, in order to historicize and contextualize contemporary cultural production. In particular, this dissertation examines contemporary narratives with regard to the “tragic mulatto” trope in US culture throughout the 19th and 20th century and articulates the ways in which the abundance of contemporary work on mixed race both sustains and resists old archetypes and narratives. To this end, a survey of life-writing, fiction, and speculative film and fiction of the past fifteen years is conducted to determine new narrative tropes governing mixed race identity, particularly those identities that deviate from the historical black/white binary of biracial identity.

While some texts remain grounded in the idea of the mixed race person as deficient or problematic with regards to race and gender identity development, the dissertation identifies a general turn away from the “tragic mulatto” archetype, and a turn toward the mixed race identity as a holistic hybrid identity that is more than the sum of its parts. The study reveals that contemporary renderings of mixed race identity have become transnational, dynamic, unsettling, and synergistic. Further, the emergent tropes in mixed race narratives suggest hybridity as the inevitable future of humanity and some contemporary texts suggest that this hybridity is the mechanism through which humanity will progress toward racial equity and substantive democratic principles. These new narratives are explicated, analyzed, and critiqued with regard to their function in contemporary United States culture and politics.

Table of Contents

• Chapter One—Beguiling and Mysterious: Multiracialism Comes of Age
  • The Mulatto Millennium
  • A Note on Terms
  • Interracial Intimacy and Miscegenation in U.S. History and Law
  • Mixed Race in the Social Sciences
  • The Tragic Mulatto y Mas: the Need for a Hybrid Criticism
• Chapter Two—Like Mother Like Daughter?: The Poetics of Mixed Race Autobiography
  • “Likeness” and Culture
  • A Matter of Perspective: The Autobiographical Impulse
  • Hands Across the Ouija Board: The Process of Writing Autobiography
  • Who Are Your People?: Racial Identity and Family
  • “Don’t ask so many questions”: The Color of Family
  • “I find family there”: Choosing Blackness in Bulletproof Diva
  • Beyond Family: Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Racial Formation
  • Blood and Water
• Chapter Three—Graceful Monsters: Mixed Race, Desire, Love, and Family in Contemporary Fiction
  • The Borders of the Tragic Mulatto
  • Hybrid Arts: The Use of Aesthetics to Narrate Mixed Race Identity
  • The Man in the Mirror: Double-Consciousness, Alternative Realities, and Mixed Race in Diaz, Alexie, Tenorio, and Davies
• Chapter Four—Vin Ordinaire: Hollywood Film and the Mixed Race Futurehero
  • Geek Nation: The Rise of Science Fiction in Hollywood Film
  • Beautiful Mutants: Transgressive Bodies and Futuresexuals
  • Saving Humanity, Sacrificing Self: Tragedy and Triumph for the New Mulatto
• Chapter Five—Mudbloods, Mutants, and Mulattos: New Speculative Fiction
  • Multiplicities: Histories, Futures, Realities, Races, Genders
  • Technologies of Hybridity: William Gibson and China Mieville
  • Half-Blood Magic: Harry Potter’s Muddy Dilemma
• Conclusion—Synergy and Symbiosis: What’s at Stake in the Stories We Tell
  • References Cited

Read or purchase the dissertation here.