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Abstract
The narratives of and about mixed-race people have provided a varied and rich artistic canvas. Using various literary works as tools for investigation, this project explores a discourse for mixed-race people and determines to what extent that discourse shapes conceptions about them. In addition, it examines to what extent subjects of mixed-racial heritage and identity establish and form new cultures, struggle for the validity of their existence in spite of racial binaries, affirm their experiences and to some degree question the validity of race itself. A discourse of mixed-race subjects is related to a discourse about race. Issues of hybridity, creolization and mestizaje have affected postcolonial subjects and Americans throughout the Diaspora. The project will consider people of mixed Native American, African, Latin, Asian, European descent and others. Literature involving and about mixed-raced subjects is their history—whether fiction or nonfiction—a history that has been silenced by political, economic and racial ideology. Mixed-racial and mixed-cultural subjects exist in the "between" spaces of racial binaries. They are "called into place" by self and others through discourse to define and negotiate power. Among the writers and works used are: Gigantic, by Marc Nesbitt, The Human Stain by Philip Roth, "Désirée's Baby" by Kate Chopin, "Stones of the Village" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, "After Many Days," by Fannie Barrier Williams, Passing by Nella Larsen, "The Downward Path To Wisdom" by Katherine Anne Porter, "The Displaced Person" by Flannery O'Connor, Yellowman by Dael Orlandersmith, "Origami" by Susan K. Ito, and poetry by Derek Walcott, Walt Whitman and others.
