The loving family : writing the multiracial family in U.S. literature after 1997
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation seeks to answer how the cooperative process of identity formation happens within several narratives and how that is reflected within the formal aspects of the selected memoirs and novels. Each of these three chapters explores the relationship between form and content in narratives about multiracial families—both in fiction and non-fiction. They are also each representing different ways that the texts, writers, and characters are answering the question, "What are you?" The motivation behind the narratives in this dissertation is an attempt to account for identity in various ways, but racial identity as it is understood in the context of and through the lens of family. In this dissertation, I explore the intersection between a particular literary characteristic and a type of family relationship in each narrative I analyze to bring into relief the ways that form and content are creating a particular representation of multiracial families. The first chapter pairs the genre of the memoir with the relationships between parents and children; the second pairs plot with relationships between multiracial siblings; and the third pairs the motif of collecting objects with intergenerational relationships. Each of the three literary features I analyze illuminates ways in which writers deploy strategies within texts adds to the representation of particular multiracial family relationships within the narratives and shows how the concerns show up within specific texts and across textual representations. Through my engagement with literary form, I put forward one way to think about multiracial identity formation and the representation of multiraciality in the period after the Census Bureau's "Mark One or More" (MOOM) decision can perhaps offer some insight into cultural and historical patterns about multiraciality as reflected in genre, plot, and motif.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Seals, Vanessa LaShawn |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Elam, Michele |
| Thesis advisor | Elam, Michele |
| Thesis advisor | Davenport, Lauren |
| Thesis advisor | Sohn, Stephen Hong |
| Degree committee member | Davenport, Lauren |
| Degree committee member | Sohn, Stephen Hong |
| Associated with | Stanford University, English Department. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Vanessa Seals. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the English Department. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Vanessa LaShawn Seals
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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