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Nicole JacobsenFollow

Content Category

Literary Criticism

Abstract/Description

Recent examples of black memoir include patterns of cultural inheritance. In an autobiographical extended essay written as if a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates quite clearly positions himself as both heir and father, passing on an inheritance through the writing of Between the World and Me. As she writes Ordinary Light in the wake of her mother’s death, Tracy K. Smith tackles the complex gifts and burdens left to her by her beloved parent. In Negroland, cultural critic Margo Jefferson reflects on a racial past whose rules and expectations were clearly laid out for her by her parents, both explicitly and implicitly. Each of these three memoirists lend a voice to the defining of a broad and multi-faceted African American culture, using their personal experiences to transmit a conception of blackness to readers and future generations. I will demonstrate how the memoir genre serves as an especially powerful mode of cultural inheritance, both as it transmits and elucidates cultural messages and as it reflects on the inheritances received by its authors. By telling the stories of childhoods shaped by different parents and different conceptions of blackness, Coates, Smith, and Jefferson demonstrate how racial socialization happens in a literary context through silence on racial issues, expectations for achievement, and protection of the black body. Writing about the cultural inheritances they received in turn passes on an inheritance to their readers. A focus on contemporary black memoir writers will shape the conversation around the specific cultural inheritance of being black in America.

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Origin of Submission

as part of a class

Faculty Involvement

Dr. Kristin Matthews

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From Parent to Child, Writer to Reader: Tracing Cultural Inheritance in Contemporary Black Memoir

Recent examples of black memoir include patterns of cultural inheritance. In an autobiographical extended essay written as if a letter to his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates quite clearly positions himself as both heir and father, passing on an inheritance through the writing of Between the World and Me. As she writes Ordinary Light in the wake of her mother’s death, Tracy K. Smith tackles the complex gifts and burdens left to her by her beloved parent. In Negroland, cultural critic Margo Jefferson reflects on a racial past whose rules and expectations were clearly laid out for her by her parents, both explicitly and implicitly. Each of these three memoirists lend a voice to the defining of a broad and multi-faceted African American culture, using their personal experiences to transmit a conception of blackness to readers and future generations. I will demonstrate how the memoir genre serves as an especially powerful mode of cultural inheritance, both as it transmits and elucidates cultural messages and as it reflects on the inheritances received by its authors. By telling the stories of childhoods shaped by different parents and different conceptions of blackness, Coates, Smith, and Jefferson demonstrate how racial socialization happens in a literary context through silence on racial issues, expectations for achievement, and protection of the black body. Writing about the cultural inheritances they received in turn passes on an inheritance to their readers. A focus on contemporary black memoir writers will shape the conversation around the specific cultural inheritance of being black in America.