Symbolic wages and identity taxes : upward mobility and middle-class narratives in Chicana/o and Black cultural production
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Rooted in an interdisciplinary methodology, Symbolic Wages and Identity Taxes establishes a comparative framework for understanding representations of upward mobility and middle-class status in Chicana/o and black cultural production. By examining novels as well as more widely disseminated media like television and film, I focus on how artists represent upward mobility as a process that illuminates the symbolic and material value of identity. Major works in whiteness studies (Roediger, Harris, Lipsitz, etc.) all focus on whiteness as a form of currency, or wages, that have historically enabled whites to own more property than people of color, assert an elevated social status, and pursue paths of upward mobility. I argue, in contrast, that membership in the middle class for racial minorities can impose a kind of tax in the form of social dues paid when negotiating dual membership in the mainstream and in a racial community. On one hand, the identity tax reveals the impossibility or undesirability of straight-line assimilation into the white mainstream. On the other hand, this tax is also an aesthetic opportunity, as ethnic writers create new kinds of narratives specifically about racialized upward mobility. In chapter one, I examine Dorothy West's The Living Is Easy (1948), Paule Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones (1957), and Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills (1985) to show how black female writers developed status seeking and artistic figures to represent intergenerational social mobility while questioning its accompanying symbols of success. Chapter two continues to analyze the representation of status along with how upward mobility evokes ambivalence in minority texts. First, I offer three reasons for why there have been so few representations of middle-class status in Chicana/o texts. I then analyze Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory (1982), The George Lopez Show (2001-2007), and Michele Serros's Honey Blonde Chica (2006) as texts that narrate the psychic stresses that accompany minority middle-class identity. In chapter three, I demonstrate how Helena María Viramontes' Under the Feet of Jesus (1994) allegorizes the process that becomes the foundation for a politically conscious upward mobility. Chapter four explicates how three Chicano films--The Gatekeeper (2002), Sleep Dealer (2008), and Machete (2010)-- reinterpret the "sellout" narrative to depict immigration and NAFTA as issues that, by forging ethnic solidarity, can transcend the divisions created by social class. My last chapter examines how Percival Everett's novel, Erasure (2001) imagines a re-emergent "passing" narrative as a template for exploring the experiential and commercial value placed on black lower-class identity. Ultimately, my dissertation reveals how authors have created characters and plotlines to reflect the increasing heterogeneity of ethnic populations while also theorizing the relationship between individual identity and group affiliation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Roman, Elda Maria |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of English. |
| Primary advisor | Moya, Paula M. L |
| Primary advisor | Saldívar, Ramón, 1949- |
| Thesis advisor | Moya, Paula M. L |
| Thesis advisor | Saldívar, Ramón, 1949- |
| Thesis advisor | Elam, Michele |
| Thesis advisor | Jones, Gavin |
| Advisor | Elam, Michele |
| Advisor | Jones, Gavin |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Elda María Román. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of English. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2013 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Elda Maria Roman
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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