(De)constructing identities: Self-creation in women writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

Abstract

This study examines the works of three Harlem Renaissance authors: Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston. In this study, I explore the multiplicity of identity in four of Fauset's short stories, "Emmy" (1912--3), "Mary Elizabeth" (1919), "The Sleeper Wakes" (1920), and "Double Trouble" (1923); in Nella Larsen's novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929); and in Zora Neale Hurston's autobiographical text, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). The variety of discursive genres here reflects the diverse construction of black female identity these works represent. More particularly, such variety parallels the multiplicity of identity itself and of the experiences of these women. The women represented in these works are all different in their ages, colours, classes, and backgrounds. This study focuses mainly on the multiplicity of positions from which any given woman may speak and construct her self. A picture of identity that is flexible, malleable, and ultimately unknowable in its entirety thus emerges. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)