An Overview of the Event: Jean Toomer and Politics at the 2012 MLA |
An Overview of the Event: Jean Toomer and Politics at the 2012 MLA
Gino Michael Pellegrini: Education, Amalgamation, Race, Class & Solidarity
2012-01-12
Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California
This is my general overview of the “Jean Toomer and Politics” special session roundtable at the 2012 MLA Annual Convention. First, I want to thank Professors Barbara Foley, Charles Scruggs, and Belinda Wheeler for their excellent presentations, and a special thanks to Professor George Hutchinson for starting the Q & A. I am very much looking forward to continuing this conversation!
In her presentation, Belinda Wheeler focused on the “documents” (census, marriage, and draft) that Byrd and Gates include in the second Norton Critical Edition of Cane to support their claim that Toomer was a Negro who passed as white. Wheeler discussed how the documents, when examined carefully and in aggregate, weaken their claim. The documents show (and this is a point that Barbara Foley also made) that Toomer sometimes identified as black and sometimes as white at different junctures in his life, and this assumes that it was Toomer who actually authored the documents. In countering their claim, Wheeler also drew upon interviews that she had conducted with Susan Sandberg, the daughter of Marjorie Content, Toomer’s second wife, as well as with Jill Quasha, a friend of Sandberg and Content who knew the family well and authored a book on Content’s photography. Toomer was married to Content from 1934 until his death in 1967, and Wheeler’s important bibliographic research sheds light on how Toomer, post-Cane, identified and lived. Her interviews suggest that Toomer did not waver from his basic position that he was an American, neither black nor white, and that he tried to live his life free from the influence of racial categories and standards…
Read the entire overview here.
Tags: Barbara Foley, Belinda Wheeler, Charles Scruggs, George Hutchinson, Gino M. Pellegrini, Gino Michael Pellegrini, Gino Pellegrini, Jean Toomer