Unasked, Unspoken 'Theory in the Flesh' in Danielle Evans' Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

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dc.contributor.advisorReckson, Lindsay Vail, 1982-
dc.contributor.authorNichols, Dana A.
dc.date.accessioned2014-07-16T18:07:25Z
dc.date.available2014-07-16T18:07:25Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractIn her short story collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans makes implicit racism visible to the eye. She relies on character and form to fill in subtext, but most importantly her work demands the reader to understand the coded world in which all of her characters live. Subtlety runs deep in Evans' narration to the point where it taps into the epicenter of what it means to be marginalized right this very moment. Her stories show the ways racism is navigated and resisted. This thesis is my literary exploration of modern day implicit racism in America. Prejudice is still persistently expressed through actions and words even if it is not the premeditated racism of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and lynching. All forms of racism function to render its subjects physically and psychologically incapacitated in the world. Evans elucidates the types of silent violences that her characters are fighting. As overt racism has receded from sight, so too have its obvious indicators. Racism is now deeply internal, psychological, physiological, and spiritual. How can we talk about race in the 21st century? We can't really. We can't talk about racism because it is skillfully concealed in normative language and behavior. My entry point into this literary exploration is fundamentally about the inconvenience of language. In the perpetuation of racism, language is actually quite skillful, but in the attempt to reveal its existence on the receiving end, it is almost impossible.
dc.description.sponsorshipHaverford College. Department of English
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10066/14347
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rights.accessOpen Access
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
dc.subject.lcshEvans, Danielle. Before you suffocate your own fool self
dc.subject.lcshRacism in literature
dc.titleUnasked, Unspoken 'Theory in the Flesh' in Danielle Evans' Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
dc.typeThesis
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