Subtitle: A Cultural and Literary Exploration
Author: Charles D. Martin
Subject: American Studies/African American Studies/Literary Studies
Paper ISBN 0-8135-3032-6
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3031-8
Pages: 240 pp., 30 b&w illus.
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Description: Explores the image of the white Negro in American popular culture from the late eighteenth century to the present.
Blacks with white skin. Since colonial times, showmen have exhibited the bodies of African Americans with white or gradually whitening skin in taverns, dime museums, and circus sideshows. The term "white Negro" has served to describe an individual born with albinism as well as those who have vitiligo, a disorder that robs the skin of its pigment in ever-growing patches. In The White African American Body, Charles D. Martin examines the proliferation of the image of the white Negro in American popular culture, from the late eighteenth century to the present day.
This enigmatic figure highlights the folly of the belief in immutable racial differences. If skin is a race marker, what does it mean for blacks literally to be white? What does this say not only about blacks but also about whites? Scientists have probed this mystery, philosophers have pondered its meaning, and artists have profited from the sale of images of these puzzling figures.
Lavishly illustratedwith many rarely seen photographsThe White African American Body shows how the white Negro occupied, and still occupies, the precarious position between white and black, and how this figure remains resilient in American culture.
Charles D. Martin teaches American literature at Florida State University.
Praise for The White African American Body
"In his first book, Martin examines Americas obsession with skin color in a remarkably direct fashion. Taking a literary approach, he focuses on the image of the white Negro in American social history and popular culture. . . . The result is a unique exposé of the perception, interpretation, and exploitation of race in America addressing not only the social construction f cultural preferences within a racial dichotomy but also the inherent dubiousness of racial justifications for social, cultural, and historical actions. . . . Recommended."Library Journal
"In showing that racial passing is a figurative extension of what is suggested by the disturbing figure of the white Negro, Charles D. Martin offers a distinctly offbeat and valuable look at one of the persistent themes in American literature and culture."
Leonard Cassuto, author of The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture
