Interrogating Eurocentric Narratives: Transcending Borders and Queering Race, Gender, and Sexuality in William and Ellen Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom and Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda

Abstract

European liberalism can be generalized as Eurocentric narratives that justify colonial racism and sexism and deny its ongoing legacies, thereby disavowing the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the East Indies and China trades in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Black slaves in the transatlantic slave trade and Chinese indentured laborers in the East Indies and China trades share common suffering from colonial racism and sexism that not only turns them into coercive and dehumanized laborers and renders their bodies neuter under compulsory heterosexualism, but also takes different forms from U.S. slavery to post-emancipation in the Caribbean, and to our contemporary world. This thesis critically investigates the racism and sexism of colonialism in two distinct yet interconnected literary texts: William and Ellen Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom and Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda. Through a comparative analysis of the two texts, I argue that the interrogation of Eurocentric narratives should be achieved by integrating the discussion of the two texts, leaving out one of which may run the risk of perpetuating Eurocentric narratives. Drawing on theories of colonialism, postcolonialism, race, gender, and sexuality, I also argue that both texts vividly exhibit the colonial racism and sexism imposed on Black slaves and Chinese indentured laborers. Both texts also repudiate colonial racism and sexism and its ongoing legacies and provide ways to survive for marginalized individuals in our contemporary world. Due to limited time and space, this thesis briefly mentions the issues of sexual violence and human trafficking affected by the ongoing legacies of colonial racism and sexism in our contemporary world. It is therefore suggested that future research explore the contemporary sexual violence and human trafficking on the basis of transatlantic slave trade and the East Indies and China trade and offer ways and safe spaces for marginalized people who are facing colonialism.