| The Myth of Aunt Jemima: White Women Representing Black Women Contributor(s): Roberts, Diane (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415049199 ISBN-13: 9780415049191 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $47.45 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 1994 Annotation: "The Myth of Aunt Jemima" is a bold and incisive examination at the way three centuries of white women writers have represented "race" in both England and America. In this dynamic and eloquent study, Diane Roberts challenges the widely held belief that white women writers have simply appropriated the dominant cultural inscriptions of race. Negotiating "Beloved, Gone with the Wind, Oroonoko," as well as authors such as Frances Trollope, Frances Wright, Harriet Martineau and Frances Kemble, Roberts displays a masterly command over recent critical theory, deploying the work of Bakhtin in order to lay the foundation for a reading of the multiple inscriptions of race, gender, and sexuality. Moving deftly between popular cultural texts, such as the representation of "Aunt Jemima" and the historical representation of black women in white women's writing, Roberts brilliantly and trenchantly reads the co-articulation of racialist and anti-sexist discourses, at once always aware of and attentive to the subtle contradictions that mark the double inscription of race and gender. "The Myth of Aunt Jemima" is a brave and intelligent account of the history of white women's encounter with slavery and its aftermath. This text is bound to raise the temperature of debate within and outside of feminist theory. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 820.992 |
| LCCN: 93050574 |
| Lexile Measure: 1410 |
| Physical Information: 0.77" H x 5.52" W x 8.48" (0.71 lbs) 240 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Myth of Aunt Jemima is a bold and exciting look at the way three centuries of white women writers have tackled the subject of race in both Britain and America. Diane Roberts challenges the widely-held belief that white women writers have simply acquiesed in majority cultural inscriptions of race. The Myth of Aunt Jemima shows how 'the mythic spheres of race, of the separation of black and white into low and high, other and originary, tainted and pure, remain to trouble a society struggling still to free itself from debilitating racial representations.' |