Mulatto/Mestizo Literature Class Bookshelf

MULATTO/MESTIZO LITERATURE CLASS BOOKSHELF

SPRING 2000 - University Park Campus

The Ways of White Folks

                         LANGSTON HUGHES
Langston Hughes writes about several characters who reflect the complex reactions of white and black people towards race.

DANZY SENNA

The novel analyzes the politics of race in the United States of America.
"A long time ago, I disappeared...The next I was a nobody, just a body without a name or a history...And when I stopped being nobody, I would become white-white as my skin, hair, bones allowed. My body would fill in the blanks, tell me who I should become, and I would let it speak for me." Caucasia

   NELLA LARSEN

Passing

An exploration of the boundaries of race. The psychological and social effects of passing as white in America in the 1930s.

I Am A Martinican Woman

MAYOTTE CAPECIA
"I gave careful thought to this grandmother whom I had never known and who died because she loved a colored man, a Martinican...I..decided that I could love only a white man, a blond with blue eyes, a Frenchman."
I am a Martinican Woman

MICHELLE CLIFF

" Abeng: African word meaning conch shell.
The blowing of the conch called the slaves to the canefields in the West Indies. The abeng had another use: it was the instrument used by the Maroon armies to pass their messages and reach one another."     Michelle Cliff

The harsh realities of skin hierarchy in Jamaica.

Dream on Monkey Mountain

DEREK WALCOTT

"Mongrel as I am, something prickles in me when I see the word Ashanti as with the word Warwickshire, both separately intimating my grandfathers' roots, both baptizing this neither proud nor ashamed bastard, this hybrid, this West Indian." ("What The Twilight Says" in Dream on Monkey Mountain )

BESSIE HEAD

A collection of autobiographical writings covering her life in Southern Africa up to her death in 1986.

"...My mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man."

            Preface to "Witchcraft" 1975

AMONG FAMILY

Marie N'Diaye

Acknowledgments:

Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott, Cover Design by Muriel Nasser, Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1999.
Abeng by Michelle Cliff, used by permission of Dutton, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., copyright 1984.
Passing by Nella Larsen, used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., copyright 1997 by Thadious M. Davis.
Caucasia by Danzy Senna, used by permission of Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., copyright 1998 by Danzy Senna.
A Woman Alone by Bessie Head, publisher Heinemann, 1990, reprinted by permission of Heinemann Educational Publishers, a division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd.
The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes, publisher Alfred A. Knopf, copyright 1933-1934.
I Am A Martinican Woman by Mayotte Capecia, copyright by Beatrice Stith Clark, 1997, publisher Passeggiata Press.

The Ways of White Folks LANGSTON HUGHES Langston Hughes writes about several characters who reflect the complex reactions of white and black people towards race.	DANZY SENNA The novel analyzes the politics of race in the United States of America. "A long time ago, I disappeared...The next I was a nobody, just a body without a name or a history...And when I stopped being nobody, I would become white-white as my skin, hair, bones allowed. My body would fill in the blanks, tell me who I should become, and I would let it speak for me." Caucasia
NELLA LARSEN Passing An exploration of the boundaries of race. The psychological and social effects of *passing* as white in America in the 1930s.	I Am A Martinican Woman MAYOTTE CAPECIA "I gave careful thought to this grandmother whom I had never known and who died because she loved a colored man, a Martinican...I..decided that I could love only a white man, a blond with blue eyes, a Frenchman." I am a Martinican Woman
MICHELLE CLIFF " *Abeng:* African word meaning conch shell. The blowing of the conch called the slaves to the canefields in the West Indies. The abeng had another use: it was the instrument used by the Maroon armies to pass their messages and reach one another." Michelle Cliff The harsh realities of skin hierarchy in Jamaica.	Dream on Monkey Mountain DEREK WALCOTT "Mongrel as I am, something prickles in me when I see the word Ashanti as with the word Warwickshire, both separately intimating my grandfathers' roots, both baptizing this neither proud nor ashamed bastard, this hybrid, this West Indian." ("What The Twilight Says" in Dream on Monkey Mountain )
BESSIE HEAD A collection of autobiographical writings covering her life in Southern Africa up to her death in 1986. "...My mother was white, and she had acquired me from a black man." Preface to "Witchcraft" 1975	AMONG FAMILY Marie N'Diaye