COMPARATIVE BLACK LITERATURE AND RACIAL ENCOUNTERS: TRAUMA, IDENTITY, AND THE LITERARY REIFICIATION OF RACE

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to converge and apply Elijah P. Anderson’s concept of “Nigger Moment,” as delineated in his 2011 work, The Cosmopolitan Canopy, as a particular category of trauma, experienced exclusively by Africana men, women, and children, with William E. Cross’ theory of racial socialization called “Nigrescence,” to Comparative Black Literature (CBL). While experiences with racism in both individual and structural forms have played a fundamental role in analyses of Africana literature, a focus on the incidence of these “Moments,” as they contribute to the subject’s “Nigrescence” (the series of racial encounters both within and without the group that precipitate the subject’s exploration of their racial identity) through an intersectional lens applied to CBL, allows the analyst or critic to observe how the means by which the “Moment” is experienced, in what context it is experienced, and how the identity of the literary subject(s) manifest patterns of Africana identity formation within fiction and non-fiction narrative, and, ultimately, Africana individuals. Ultimately, I will explore the pedagogical implications of applying the “N-Moment” to Comparative Black Literature within a multi-cultural and multi-racial classroom in the interest of social cohesion and positive identity formation. This will be done by outlining the various dimensions of the N-Moment within classed, gendered, and migrant contexts, as they apply to Claude McKay’s Banana Bottom, Jessie Redmon Fauset’s There is Confusion, Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye, James Baldwin’s Another Country, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.