The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black-Jewish Imaginary

During the first half of the twentieth century, American Jews demonstrated a commitment to racial justice as well as an attraction to African American culture. Until now, the debate about whether such black-Jewish encounters thwarted or enabled Jews' claims to white privilege has focused on men and representations of masculinity while ignoring questions of women and femininity. The White Negress investigates literary and cultural texts by Jewish and African American women, opening new avenues of inquiry that yield more complex stories about Jewishness, African American identity, and the meanings of whiteness.

Lori Harrison-Kahan examines writings by Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as the blackface performances of vaudevillian Sophie Tucker and controversies over the musical and film adaptations of Show Boat and Imitation of Life. Moving between literature and popular culture, she illuminates how the dynamics of interethnic exchange have at once produced and undermined the binary of black and white.

Author: Lori Harrison-Kahan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 12/01/2010
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9780813547831

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2011

About the Author
LORI HARRISON-KAHAN teaches in the English department at Boston College and has previously taught at Connecticut College, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.