Passing as the 'tragic' mulatto: Constructions of hybridity in Toni Morrison's novels, and, Essentialism and degrees of diversity: Examining the politics of authority in the literature classroom

I. This paper examines the mixed-race characters in the novels of Toni Morrison. The characters of Soaphead Church in The Bluest Eye, Golden Gray in Jazz and Pat Best in Paradise function as revisions of the tragic mulatto stereotype found in nineteenth century American literature. This paper suggests that, like Pauline Hopkins did in her turn-of-the-century sentimental melodramas, Morrison complicates notions of mulatto identity. Further, this paper argues that as hybrid subjects, each character literally manifests W. E. B. Du Bois's problematic notion of the color line and transforms that narrow space into one of creativity and autonomy.; II. This paper acknowledges that the instructor's identity, whether students construct it as academically or culturally authoritative or both, plays a significant role in how students interpret multicultural literary texts. In order to encourage students' direct engagement with a text and its world, this paper outlines a pedagogy aimed at temporarily displacing teacherly authority so that students build the knowledge necessary to analyze a literary work. Such a practice involves recognition of the experience we bring to the text as well as the specific cultural context of the work. This paper offers a pedagogy that encourages students to use their own experiences, the social text of the classroom and the context of a work to build meaning from and about a literary text.