| In my dissertation "Laughing Across Borders: Black Diasporic Literature and the Negotiation of Master Strategies," I explore the ways in which twentieth century diasporic authors adapt canonical works and appropriate humor in interrogating and reimagining limiting representations of Black identity. Hailing from the United States, Jamaica, Martinique and St. Lucia respectively, writers Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Bennett, Aime Cesaire and Derek Walcott acknowledge their connection to a Western written tradition. Still, they highlight the omissions of hierarchical models by implicitly questioning unethical depictions that historically undermined diasporic peoples along the lines of race, class, gender, and even region. While engaging recognizable European texts these authors analyze the ways in which identity is ideologically conceptualized and inextricably linked with particular literary traditions. Furthermore, by interrogating the societal position of marginalized protagonists, the writers introduce subversive diasporic icons who point to the limits of social belonging. Additionally, characters' inventive deployment of elements such as spirituality and language are crucial in articulating a level of dignity previously missing from representations of the diasporic figure in Western literature. Chapter one explores the representations of gender and the ways in which Hurston's humorous use of spirituality and her deployment of a female narrator subverts the biblical narrative of Moses, on which her novel Moses, Man of the Mountain is based. Chapter two explores the hybrid oral poetry that results from Jamaican writer Louise Bennett's disruption of the ballad form through uses of the vernacular and the trickster figure, Anancy. Chapter three examines the complex rendering of Black spirituality (represented by the semi-deity and trickster Eshu Elegbara), which signals a distinctly diasporic space in Martinican author Aime Cesaire's A Tempest (a reimagining of William Shakespeare's The Tempest). Chapter four explores the disruptive calypsonian factotum in St. Lucian writer Derek Walcott's Pantomime. This individual subverts authority through verbal cunning, and undermines the dyad of the Robinson Crusoe narrative on which the text is loosely based. In signaling a new genre, a particular type of humor emerges which in addition to its subversive abilities also embodies a certain vulnerability and resilience that reflect the complexity of diasporic identity. |
