Slippery Characters
Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4546155 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Gubar, Laura Browder |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 152 |
| Publication date | 2002-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African American Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1062-4783 • E-ISSN: 1945-6182 |
| Publisher | Penn State Press (Project Muse) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2903381 |
| OpenAlex | W36549521 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
In the 1920s, black janitor Sylvester Long reinvented himself as Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, and Elizabeth Stern, the native-born daughter of a German Lutheran and a Welsh Baptist, authored the immigrant's narrative I Am a Woman--and a Jew; in the 1990s, Asa Carter, George Wallace's former speechwriter, produced the fake Cherokee autobiography, The Education of Little Tree . While striking, these examples of what Laura Browder calls ethnic impersonator autobiographies are by no means singular. Over the past 150 years, a number of American authors have left behind unwanted identities by writing themselves into new ethnicities. Significantly, notes Browder, these ersatz autobiographies have tended to appear at flashpoints in American history: in the decades before the Civil War, when immigration laws and laws regarding Native Americans were changing in the 1920s, and during the civil rights era, for example. Examining the creation and reception of such works from the 1830s through the 1990s--against a background ranging from the abolition movement and Wild West shows to more recent controversies surrounding blackface performance and jazz music--Browder uncovers their surprising influence in shaping American notions of identity. |Examining the creation and reception of ethnic impersonator autobiographies from the 1830s through the 1990s, Browder uncovers their surprising influence in shaping American notions of identity
Ethnic group · Genealogy · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Latin American and Latino Studies
Sacred Theatres
Haim Afen Range
Cumulative Index
Annual Bibliography of Works About Life Writing, 1999-2000
Detecting Indianness
Detecting Winnifred Eaton
A Complication of Complaints
Testimonialidad conflictiva en narraciones de esclavos afroamericanos
Literary Racial Impersonation
Native Bondage, Narrative Mobility
Translating the Watcher's Voice
Transatlantic Picture Stories
What is a Real Indian
Learning from Little Tree
Mammy-memory
NDNGirls and Pocahotties
The Jewish Girl with a Colored Voice”
What If I Don't Wanna Be White?”
Intercultural Identities in W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants and Norbert Gstrein's Die englischen Jahre
Kaleidoscope
Janus and the Portuguese Emigrant
From GI Sweethearts to Lock and Lollers
| Unique citing works | 22 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,85 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2022 (23) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |