Compare and contrast Johnson’s deployment of the figure of the tragic mulatto in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man with the treatment of miscegenation and passing in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. | Homework Helpers

Introduction: Wiley Blackwell – pgs. 1-6

Claude McKay (1889–1948)  pgs. 7-15 Songs of Jamaica & 15 – 57 Banjo

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) http://theotherpages.org/poems/books/dunbar/dunbar06.html

Jessie Fauset (1882-1961) pgs. 58-76 Double Trouble & Dark Algiers in the White

Charles W. Chesnutt – (1858-1932) What is a White Man? http://www.chesnuttarchive.org/works/Essays/whiteman.html

1. Read Banjo and “Dark Algiers in the White.”  Discuss what you see as the connection between African American intellectuals, colonialism, and interwar Europe in these two works.

2. Read “Double Trouble” and “What is a White Man.”  Discuss how Angelique’s story relates to Chesnutt’s statements about whiteness and illegitimacy.

3.  Read two of the dialect poems in Songs of Jamaica alongside two dialect poems of your choosing in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896). Analyze the similarities and differences between the two authors’ use of dialect, keeping in mind that McKay was from Jamaica while Dunbar was from Ohio.

Please see attachment for reading material.

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2) Compare and contrast Johnson’s deployment of the figure of the tragic mulatto in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man with the treatment of miscegenation and passing in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.