
Slippery Characters
Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities
Laura Browder(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 30. June 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-0-8078-4859-3 (ISBN)
Description
In the 1920s, black janitor Sylvester Long reinvented himself as Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, and Elizabeth Stern, the native-born daughter of a German Lutheran and a Welsh Baptist, authored the immigrant's narrative I Am a Woman--and a Jew ; in the 1990s, Asa Carter, George Wallace's former speechwriter, produced the fake Cherokee autobiography, The Education of Little Tree . While striking, these examples of what Laura Browder calls ethnic impersonator autobiographies are by no means singular. Over the past 150 years, a number of American authors have left behind unwanted identities by writing themselves into new ethnicities. Significantly, notes Browder, these ersatz autobiographies have tended to appear at flashpoints in American history: in the decades before the Civil War, when immigration laws and laws regarding Native Americans were changing in the 1920s, and during the civil rights era, for example. Examining the creation and reception of such works from the 1830s through the 1990s--against a background ranging from the abolition movement and Wild West shows to more recent controversies surrounding blackface performance and jazz music--Browder uncovers their surprising influence in shaping American notions of identity. |Examining the creation and reception of ethnic impersonator autobiographies from the 1830s through the 1990s, Browder uncovers their surprising influence in shaping American notions of identity.
More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
560 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8078-4859-3 (9780807848593)
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E-Book
06/2003
The University of North Carolina Press
€29.49
Available for download
Person
Laura Browder is professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is author, most recently, of Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America, and is writer and coproducer of the documentary film Gone to Texas: The Lives of Forrest Carter, based on her book Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities (both books UNC Press).