Willie J. Harrell - We Wear the Mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Politics of Representative Reality

2010 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242

A LL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2010000360

ISBN 978-1-60635-046-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

We wear the mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar and the politics of representative reality /

edited by Willie J. Harrell Jr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60635-046-1 (hardcover: alk. paper)

1. Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 18721906Criticism and interpretation.

2. Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 18721906Language.

3. African Americans in literature. I. Harrell, Willie J., Jr.

PS 1557. W 4 2010

811.4dc22

2010000360

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1

Willie J. Harrell Jr.

Lena Ampadu

Nassim W. Balestrini

Sharon D. Raynor

Elston L. Carr Jr.

Megan M. Peabody

Coretta M. Pittman

Mark Noonan

Matt Sandler

Adam Sonstegard

Amy Cummins

Willie J. Harrell Jr.

Jeannine King

Dolores V. Sisco

Michael P. Moreno

Jayne E. Waterman

Willie J. Harrell Jr.

I want to know whether or not you believe in preserving by Afro-American... writers those quaint old tales and songs of our fathers which have made the fame of Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, Ruth McEnery Stuart and others! Or whether you like so many others think we should ignore the past and all its capital literary materials.

P AUL L AURENCE D UNBAR ,
L ETTER TO A LICE R UTH M OORE , A PRIL 17, 1895

[Dunbars] brilliant and unique achievement was to have studied the American negro objectively, and to have represented him as he found him to be, with humor, with sympathy, and yet with what the reader must instinctively feel to be entire truthfulness.

W. D. H OWELLS , I NTRODUCTION TO L YRICS OF L OWLY L IFE (1896)

O F THE INNUMERABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS that secured Paul Laurence Dunbars footing as Americas poet laureate of the Negro Race, perhaps none is more significant than the fact that he fashioned two distinct voices in his worksthe traditional English of the conventional poet and the renowned, redolent dialect of African Americans at the turn of the century. Between the publication of his first collection of poetry, Oak and Ivy, in 1892 and his death from tuberculosis and the publication of his last volume of poetry, Joggin Erlong, in 1906, Dunbar would write three librettos, eleven volumes of poetry, four novels, songs, and more than a few short stories and essays, rightfully leaving behind a legacy that would inspire many writers to come. By and large, Dunbars legendary corpus has been highly praised as an extraordinary representation of black life in early twentieth-century America, which is the subject of this collection. We Wear the Mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Politics of Representative Reality builds upon the already significant body of research published over the past two decades on Dunbars extraordinary creativity. What distinguishes this volume from previous We Wear the Mask picks up where Jay Martins A Singer in the Dawn: Reinterpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar left off in 1975. An assessment of some of the earliest scholarship of Dunbars artistic ability demonstrates how crucial it is to compile these rereadings and critical approaches to his works.

Drawing on an array of approaches to analyzing Dunbars poetic creations; most representative novel, The Sport of the Gods; and other works, the essays in this volume exemplify the kinds of issues being addressed in the twenty-first century, among them Dunbars war verse, the influence of African aesthetics in his poetry, Dunbars use of dialect and minstrelsy to represent his race, and his depiction of African American masculinity. The contributors concentrate on the politics of black representation and identity to advance Dunbar studies on two fronts: contributors situate Dunbars works within the age of contemporary literary studies while locating his artistry in relation to various contextualizations of the politics of black reality that proliferated at the turn of the century, and they engage earnestly in the process of evaluating Dunbars works, closely examining the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. Although the topics of the contributions vary, if read together, they offer valuable insights into why Dunbar has become one of Americas most celebrated, widely taught African American authors. Indeed, the essays as a whole reveal the ability of Dunbars works to spark enlightening discussions of the vexing and conflicting cultural conditions of turn-of-the-century America.

The evolution of Dunbars representation of black reality meant that the poor reception of The Uncalled (1898), Dunbars first novel, had an adverse effect on his racial consciousness. The story of a young white man who refuses to enter the ministry, The Uncalled lacked the local color of the African American community. After the publication of The Uncalled, Dunbar published his first collection of short stories, Folks from Dixie, which included stories about southern blacks, and some about African Americans who were trying to traverse the terrain of the Northeast. Folks from Dixie was immensely more popular than The Uncalled. Its not hard to see why Dunbar shifted his attention from nonracial themes in The Uncalled to matters of race interests in Folks from Dixie and later works.characterized black reality by extracting his voice from the previous white representations to combat the negative stereotyping to which his people had been subjugated. Desiring not only self-determination for himself but also his races liberation from the constraints of nineteenth-century American prejudice, Dunbars most recognizable poem, We Wear the Mask, was evidence of this racial manifestation.

Written during Reconstruction, We Wear the Mask epitomized the angst African Americans found themselves experiencing while attempting to construct an identity amid the preexisting racial hierarchy not long after the Civil War. Dunbars usage of the metaphorical mask suggested that African Americans were preeminently commodities, and citizens only marginally as far as their rights as human beings were concerned. Employing a preDu Boisian double consciousness approach, Dunbar sought to assist white America in acknowledging the trials and tribulations blacks faced on a daily basis. Institutionalized racism of Reconstruction dictated that black writers had to silence or else