Abjective Conflict Among Mixed Race Mother-Daughter Dyads in Modern and Contemporary U.S. Women’s Prose

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  • March 21, 2019
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  • Lam, Bethany
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English and Comparative Literature
Abstract
  • Many U.S. women’s narratives of mixed race mother-daughter conflict suggest race-based abjection as a primary factor. Mothers and daughters develop a horror—sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle—of their respective others’ racial identifications and try to reject them, but often prove unable to separate entirely, remaining instead in fraught relationships. This study examines race-based abjection between mothers and their differently raced daughters in multiple iterations. “Chapter 1: Secret Mother” begins in the Jim Crow era and tells the story of Norma Storch, an aspiring actress who had a daughter with a black comedian. Fearing the socioeconomic consequences of being a white woman known to have non-white offspring, Storch sent the girl to live with a black family. Storch remained part of her daughter’s life, but refused for nearly forty years to acknowledge their biological relationship publicly. “Chapter 2: Secret Daughter” flips the narrative and explains how that daughter, acclaimed journalist and documentarian June Cross, responded to her mother’s abjection with race-based abjection of her own. “Chapter 3: Secret Genealogy” turns to Louise Erdrich’s iconic Pauline “Sister Leopolda” Puyat character and shows how she simultaneously embodies both maternal and filial race-based abjection. Puyat constructs a racial identity that rejects both her mother and her daughter as Indian, but considers herself white. Finally, “Chapter 4: Secret Abjection” demonstrates how race-based abjection between mother and daughter evolved after Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that legalized interracial marriage. After Loving, mixed race mother-daughter dyads had little need to separate physically. Instead, in the cases of Elizabeth and Ruby in Joan Steinau Lester’s Mama’s Child, Sandy and Birdie in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia, and real-life author-activists Alice and Rebecca Walker, race-based abjection led mothers to objectify their daughters and vice versa. This project problematizes both long-standing and contemporary narratives that mixed race people and relationships inevitably lead to greater racial harmony. It rejects romanticization and deepens current conversations in Critical Mixed Race Studies, Women’s Studies, and Contemporary American Literature by highlighting the significant societal and psychological obstacles facing women who raise differently raced daughters, and those facing the daughters themselves, in U.S. society.
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  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Salvaggio, Ruth
  • DeGuzmán, María
  • Halperin, Laura
  • Anderson, Daniel
  • Rutledge-Fisher, Rebecka
Degree
  • Doctor of Philosophy
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2018
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