Racism in Literature - Rebecca Aanerud (essay date 1997)
Rebecca Aanerud (essay date 1997)
SOURCE: Aanerud, Rebecca. “Fictions of Whiteness: Speaking the Names of Whiteness in U.S. Literature.” In Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, edited by Ruth Frankenberg, pp. 35-59. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.
[In the following essay, Aanerud discusses the social, historical, and literary implications of “whiteness” in three works, including Kate Chopin's The Awakening.]
One of the signs of our times is that we really don't know what “white” is.
—Kobena Mercer, in How Do I Look? Queer Film and Video
In our society dominant discourse tries never to speak its own name.
—Russell Ferguson, Out There: Marginality and Contemporary Art
RACIALIZING WHITENESS
The final lines of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening unmistakably mark Edna as white: “The...
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