The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (Postmillennial Pop (17))

349 Pages·2016·3.05 MB·English

by  Jennifer Lynn Stoever

The Sonic Color Line
POSTMILLENNIAL POP
General Editors: Karen Tongson and Henry Jenkins
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Th e New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination
of American Comics
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Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation
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Th e Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening
Jennifer Lynn Stoever
The Sonic Color Line
Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening
Jennifer Lynn Stoever
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
www.nyupress.org
© 2016 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
ISBN: 978-1-4798-9043-9 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-4798-8934-1 (paperback)
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the Library of Congress.
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Also available as an ebook
A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publish-
ing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University
Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. Th e
Initiative is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more infor-
mation, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Th e Sonic Color Line and the Listening Ear 1
1. Th e Word, the Sound, and the Listening Ear: Listening to
the Sonic Color Line in Frederick Douglass’s 1845
Narrative and Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 Incidents 29
2. Performing the Sonic Color Line in the Antebellum North:
Th e Swedish Nightingale and the Black Swan 78
3. Preserving “Quare Sounds,” Conserving the “Dark Past”:
Th e Jubilee Singers and Charles Chesnutt Reconstruct
the Sonic Color Line 132
4. “A Voice to Match All Th at”: Lead Belly, Richard Wright,
and Lynching’s Soundtrack 180
5. Broadcasting Race: Lena Horne, W. E. B. Du Bois, and
Ann Petry 229
Aft erword 277
Notes 281
Index 323
About the Author 331
v

For my grandma Maryanne (1923– 2001), whose lovingly gruff ,
crumpled- paper- bag voice still carries me.
For my dad, Jeff (1948– 2011), who fi rst taught me how to listen, and
whose brown Koss KO/747 headphones rest right next to my stereo.
For my son, Martin, who arrived amidst the writing of this book.
You teach me to listen anew while letting me think I am teaching
you. Your voice will always be my favorite sound. I love you more!
Infi nity!

Acknowledgments
“Can you sing out in the pouring rain? / Can you sing out,
can you sing out?”
— Fishbone, “Pouring Rain”
In summer 2015, I was honored to thank Norwood Fisher and Angelo
Moore of Fishbone in person for being my fi rst, funkiest, and fi ercest
critical race theorists. Only because music is so very powerful do people
create mechanisms like the sonic color line to contain it.
To my RUSD English teachers Kathy Rossi, Keith Lloyd, Katie Mackey,
and Richard McNeil, who taught us public school kids how to think and
write with a love and rigor that turned many of us toward futures we
thought far beyond our reach. Th ank you to art teachers Louis Fox and
Italo DiMarco, for showing me to myself.
I have boundless love for my Riverside home folks: George Campos,
Kim Earhart, Cara Cardinale Fidler, Kelly Herrera, Nova Punongbayan,
Rodrigo Ramos, Joe Spagna, and especially my dearest familia— Julia
Martinez, Sarah Parry, Karin Ribaudo, Jeff Ribaudo, Alison Sumner, Maria
Unzueta- Hernandez, and last but certainly not least, Karen Tongson.
Womb to tomb, birth to earth. Th ank you to Juan and Alice and the
Contreras- Martinez families, who helped raise me to be the woman I am
today. Th e generosity and personal example of the Honorable Joe Her-
nandez II and Gloria Lopez sustained me through graduate school.
Melissa Contreras- McGavin and Bradley McGavin, you are the wind
beneath my wings.
I was fortunate to have a top- notch, aff ordable undergraduate educa-
tion at UC Riverside. I fi rst “heard” literature in Katherine Kinney’s class;
I still dream of delivering readings as on point as hers. I also benefi tted
from the brilliance and generosity of Emory Eliot—g one too soon—
Carlos Cortés, Jennifer Doyle, John Ganim, George Haggerty, Tiff any
ix