Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

…This depiction of Alice [Jones Rhinelander] fell squarely into a white tradition of depicting mulatto women as sexually available, sexually victimized, and/or sexually predatory. By the 1920s many white Americans, particularly northern whites, joined African Americans in blaming southern white men for the existence of the substantial mulatto population that now (supposedly) threatened the racial purity of white America both by its very presence and by the behaviour—particularly the sexual behavior—of its members. Indeed, northern white writers continued to be fascinated with the supposed rituals of white-male-controlled interracial sex in the South, particularly exclusive “octoroon balls” at which light-skinned African American women competed to be the mistress of socially elite white men who would support them financially in return for sex and companionship, all in the name of romance. Such depictions, however, painted the women as desperately competing for their shared goal: a rich white lover. By the 1920 images of mulatto women focused even more directly on their supposed obsession with “landing,” either as a wife or a mistress, a rich white benefactor—and on using that liaison to appropriate white money, property, and even power…

Lewis, Earl and Heidi Adrizzone. Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White. New York: W. W. Norton. 2002. Pages 166-167.

Jackie Kay and Sebastian Barry: Identity and struggle

Posted in Articles, Arts, Audio, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2012-12-09 03:12Z by Steven

Jackie Kay and Sebastian Barry: Identity and struggle

The Guardian
2011-08-15

Sarah Crown

In our inaugural podcast from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sebastian Barry and Jackie Kay talk to us about the themes that power their work

In our first podcast from the 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival, we explore questions of identity and struggle as played out in the 20th-century…

…The poet and novelist Jackie Kay turned memoirist last year with her book Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her birth parents: a white Scottish woman, and a Nigerian man. Her writing reflects her grappling with the thorny issue of her own identity, and she reveals how this podcast has reconnected her with her family…

[Jackie Kay reads “Burying My African Father.”]

Read the entire article here. Listen to the audio here. Download the audio here.

Tags: Edinburgh International Book Festival, Jackie Kay, Sarah Crown, Sebastian Barry, The Guardian

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Mixed Race Studies

Jackie Kay and Sebastian Barry: Identity and struggle

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