By Elizabeth Cali<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The figure or trope of the \u201ctragic mulatta\/o\u201d appears in African American literature as a character with mixed race ancestry. In light of US racial politics, the one-drop rule, and white supremacist political and social adherence to the fallacies of the \u201ccolor-line,\u201d this ancestry places a mixed-race or bi-racial character\u2019s identity in question. This trope most often dramatizes the experience of a bi-racial character who physically appears white or can racially pass as white learning at some point in the narrative that they have African ancestry. The knowledge of one\u2019s racial identity is represented as tragic in that it disrupts the character\u2019s position in society and within their familial relationships, it prompts a reckoning with the sexual violence that so often resulted in the births of bi-racial children during slavery, and it presents the character with the ongoing struggle for social and political acceptance in white and black cultural, social, and political groups. The figure or trope is often represented as distressed or even suicidal in response to a perceived failure to fit in white or black communities and families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Elizabeth Cali The figure or trope of the \u201ctragic mulatta\/o\u201d appears in African American literature as a character with mixed race ancestry. In light of US racial politics, the one-drop rule, and white supremacist political and social adherence to the fallacies of the \u201ccolor-line,\u201d this ancestry places a mixed-race or bi-racial character\u2019s identity in … Trope of the Tragic Mulatta<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sb_is_suggestion_mode":false,"_sb_show_suggestion_boards":false,"_sb_show_comment_boards":false,"_sb_suggestion_history":"","_sb_update_block_changes":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-keywords"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/briefs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}