“Literature of White Estrangement” Syllabus
Over the course of the last few years, my work has continually focused on the ways that African American authors confront and engage with whiteness through the use of white characters in predominantly white texts. This started when I began to read Frank Yerby’s work, notably his early “costume novels” like The Foxes of Harrow or The Vixens. As my research expanded to comics, specifically looking at Christopher Priest’s Black Panther run, I began to notice, even in a series filled with Black characters, how Priest used a white narrator as the lens through which the reader encountered T’Challa. I see Priest working with a much longer tradition in African American literature using white characters to engage with whiteness and calling upon white readers to engage with their own whiteness. As such, I’ve been thinking about a syllabus based around Veronica Watson’s term “literature of white estrangement.” The below syllabus is in no way complete, but it is some initial thoughts on how I would organize this course.
Overview:
African American authors, since the 1800s, have written texts that center primarily around white characters. Robert Fikes, Jr. terms these works “white life novels” and they arose, according to Fikes, amidst “[t]he pressure to conform to majority group tastes and expectations along with the personal desire of the authors to…
