Cultural Melancholy: Readings of Race, Impossible Mourning, and African American Ritual

169 Pages·2015·1.96 MB·English

by  Jermaine Singleton

Cultural
Melancholy
Readings of Race,
Impossible Mourning, and
African American Ritual
jermaine singleton
Cultural
MelanCholy
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Cultural
MelanCholy
readings of raCe,
iMpossible Mourning, and
afriCan aMeriCan ritual
JerMaine singleton
university of illinois press
urbana, ChiCago, and springfield
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© 2015 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
C 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Singleton, Jermaine, 1974–
Cultural melancholy : readings of race, impossible
mourning, and African American ritual /
Jermaine Singleton.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-252-03962-1 (hardback) —
ISBN 978-0-252-09771-3 (e-book)
1. American literature—African American
authors—History and criticism. 2. Grief in literature.
3. Mourning customs—United States. 4. African
Americans—Race identity—History. I. Title.
PS153.N5S553 2015
810.9'896073—dc23 2015019415
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For Margaret and James Singleton (my loving parents)
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 The Melancholy That Is Not Her Own:
The Evolution of the Blueswoman and the
Consolidation of Whiteness 27
2 Reconstituted Melancholy:
Impossible Mourning and the Prevalence of Ritual
and Race in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson 49
3 The Melancholy of Faith:
Reading the Gendered and Sexual Politics of Testifying
in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and
The Amen Corner 65
4 Queering Celie’s Same-Sex Desire:
Impossible Mourning, Trauma, and Heterosexual
Failure in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple 83
5 A Clearing beyond the Melancholic Haze:
Staging Racial Grieving in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus
and Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change 99
Coda: On Conformity to the Category of Time (Race) 119
Notes 125
Bibliography 135
Index 145
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aCknowledgMents
This book has several midwives. First, I would like to thank my editors at the
University of Illinois Press, Dawn Durante and Larin McLaughlin, for believ-
ing in the promise of my original manuscript and shepherding it through
a lengthy yet rewarding review process. I appreciate their thoughtful and
helpful comments and their work in finding the remarkable readers this
manuscript needed to help me achieve my original goals for it.
At Hamline University, Fernando Delgado and John Matachek, who served
consecutively in the Dean’s Office of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
provided much material support for this project. I am grateful for the edito-
rial support of Erin Derwin and Geof Garvey. The moral support of Kris
Deffenbacher, Marcela Kostihova, Mike Reynolds, Deanna Thompson, Susie
Steinbach, Nancy Holland, Duane Cady, Jenny Kiel, Andrea Bell, Jean Strait,
and Earl Schwartz has made Hamline a true professional home. I am grate-
ful to Alice Moorhead, Veena Deo, and Mark Olson for encouraging me to
approach teaching in an experimental fashion and being such remarkable
mentors over the years. Most of all, I thank my students. This book could
not exist without the undergraduate students who enrolled in “American
Melancholy,” “Reading Whiteness,” “Reading Masculinities,” and “Dramas
of Race” over the years at Hamline University. I’m a lucky bloke to have had
students who open their minds willingly to insurgent critical thinking and
practice. Reading the underside of American history by interrogating “the
obvious and well-received” with you all has been most rewarding.
I’m deeply indebted to my intellectual and professional mentors from my
days at the University of Minnesota—John S. Wright, John Mowitt, Timothy
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