The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man Essay Example
The indefinite status accorded James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) is, to a great extent, attributable to its standing as the first "fictional" text written by an African American that deliberately masks its genre. The confessional frame is a guise, self-consciously employed by Johnson to authenticate the main character's story, strategically to give the text the appearance of an autobiography. From the onset, the narrative co-mingles genres; like its racially hybrid narrator, the text itself is a kind of narrative message.
Moreover, Johnson represents a fictional anti-hero, a black man who chooses to "pass" for a white man who need not negotiate the hardships of race relations in America. As a consequence, The Autobiography is a thematic departure from its autobiographical predecessors, Booker T. Washington's “Up from Slavery” (1901) and W. E. B. Du Bois's “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903). It also departs from traditional narrative representations of "passing" such as those found in the late 19th-century novels of Frances Harper and Charles Chesnutt. Still, Johnson was a publicly acclaimed "race man." The intrigue of his formal variations is that he knowingly wrote such hybrid "anathema" in the highly charged racial climate of a rabidly Jim Crow era.
The narrative line of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, then, as a result of what might be considered the work's contending forces, operates along several discursive lines, including a "false" fictional representation of the narrator, Johnson's own political reflections and theories and signifying riffs on conventions from the book's literary ancestors. Themes such as black uplift, racial pride, and social responsibility--borrowed from antedating black autobiographical and fictional works--clash with the ideological position that the narrator must espouse to justify his own politically charged identity choices. The Autobiography's manifold positions create a writerly
Moreover, Johnson represents a fictional anti-hero, a black man who chooses to "pass" for a white man who need not negotiate the hardships of race relations in America. As a consequence, The Autobiography is a thematic departure from its autobiographical predecessors, Booker T. Washington's “Up from Slavery” (1901) and W. E. B. Du Bois's “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903). It also departs from traditional narrative representations of "passing" such as those found in the late 19th-century novels of Frances Harper and Charles Chesnutt. Still, Johnson was a publicly acclaimed "race man." The intrigue of his formal variations is that he knowingly wrote such hybrid "anathema" in the highly charged racial climate of a rabidly Jim Crow era.
The narrative line of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, then, as a result of what might be considered the work's contending forces, operates along several discursive lines, including a "false" fictional representation of the narrator, Johnson's own political reflections and theories and signifying riffs on conventions from the book's literary ancestors. Themes such as black uplift, racial pride, and social responsibility--borrowed from antedating black autobiographical and fictional works--clash with the ideological position that the narrator must espouse to justify his own politically charged identity choices. The Autobiography's manifold positions create a writerly