Portraits of the New Negro Woman : : Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance / / Cherene Sherrard-Johnson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Sherrard-Johnson, Cherene,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2007]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 26

Of all the images to arise from the Harlem Renaissance, the most thought-provoking were those of the mulatta. For some writers, artists, and filmmakers, these images provided an alternative to the stereotypes of black womanhood and a challenge to the color line. For others, they represented key aspects of modernity and race coding central to the New Negro Movement. Due to the mulatta's frequent ability to pass for white, she represented a variety of contradictory meanings that often transcended racial, class, and gender boundaries. In this engaging narrative, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson uses the writings of Nella Larsen and Jessie Fauset as well as the work of artists like Archibald Motley and William H. Johnson to illuminate the centrality of the mulatta by examining a variety of competing arguments about race in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction: The Iconography of the Mulatta -- Chapter 1. "A Plea for Color": Nella Larsen's Textual Tableaux -- Chapter 2. Jessie Fauset's New Negro Woman Artist and the Passing Market -- Chapter 3. "Black Beauty Betrayed": The Modernist Mulatta in Black and White -- Chapter 4. The Geography of the Mulatta in Jean Toomer's Cane -- Chapter 5. Redressing the New Negro Woman -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author