Denielle Jackson

African American women: the roles skin color plays in literature

African Americans and how they are portrayed in literature has sparked my interest. My the Song of Solomon, the first Toni Morrison novel and read, Morrison identifies her characters by their skin color and other physical characteristics. This has inspired me to examine African American women and how skin color plays a major role in their personalities and status amongst race and society in literature.  Race is very prominent in literature especially historical literature. I always wondered previously why black women were rarely perceived in literature as being beautiful if they have a dark skin color complexion. Numerous authors and their writings design their characters to fit society’s expectation of dark colored black women. They consistently depict them as being less attractive with kinky or nappy hair, and light skinned women having a more glamorous appeal with beauty. In my research I am hope to find some type of explanation or history behind this topic or at least more of an understanding.

Holly Jackson explains, Blacks in literature are heavily described by their physical appearance; color defines a black person more than ethnicity. She observes that the color of their skin is what sets the stage for status, profession and their beauty. In reading the article “Identifying Emma Durham Kelley Rethinking Race and Authorship” Holly Jackson made some valid points about African American women in literature. The first thing I noticed was the word “mulatto”. Mulatto is used to describe black women who have white ancestry, or their physical appearance favors a white person more than a black. It’s interesting to know that characters who are assigned the term mulatto have better careers, more education, and more opportunities. Usually the dark skinned women are written to be less educated, less attractive and have more of a domestic role within the text. Also in literature, African Americans who had whites in their genealogy would pride themselves and consider themselves fully white and completely ignore their African American ancestry. These two points, that Jackson writes shed some light that the negative connotations of being Black and being dark skinned have in books or novels we read and also how it has an influence on black women.

While reading the essay Geoffrey Sanborn Mother’s Milk Frances Harper and the Circulation of Blood his descriptions of black and white women in literature are unique. Sanborn focuses on the contrast of colors by pointing out biological characteristics such as the flushes with paleness and the blushes of color. The author makes the comparison of between the light color skin or dark skin has more of a science fiction tone. Ironically African American women tend to flush more than blush in novels and other fictions. An African American author typically creates the black women in their novels to flush with paleness when they show their emotions. It shows more of the white feminine characteristics of the dominant race and viewed more of a proper emotion evoked by thoughts, where as blushing is viewed as a sense of embarrassment or shyness associated with being black which is more of an eternal feeling.

While conducting this research I have learned a wealth of knowledge which will have me continuously analyzing black women in novels or poems. Writers have numerous ways of imagining or creating black women in their literature. It was interesting to find out how something as simple as the emotions “flushing and blushing” can have such a symbolic meaning and learning that Blacks consider white ancestry in being more superior to the uniqueness of the African American race. For my own personal knowledge, I will continue to explore the many avenues on how black women are depicted, and the aesthetics of the words that authors use to describe them. I may revise my question to focus more specifically on African American literature written by black authors, only because it can redefine my research and also help me better answer my question.

Works Cited

Jackson, Holly. "Identifying Emma Durham Kelley: Rethinking Race and Authorship." PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 122.3 (2007): 739-41. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.

Sanborn, Geoffrey. "Mother's Milk: Frances Harper and the Circulation of Blood." The John Hopkins University Press 72.3 (2005): 691-715. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.

Cashman, Nicky. "Politics, Passion , and Prejudice: Alice Childress's Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White." Journal of American Studies 43.3 (2009): 407-21. MLA International. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Everyman's Library, 1995. Print.