Black fatherhood in contemporary African American novels

Abstract

This thesis examines popular genre conventions to illuminate Black men’s position as fathers in relation to a contemporary and historical situation with racial laws and cultural stereotypes that created an exceptional situation for Black men’s paternity, whether in the past or the present. It also identifies how contemporary Black authors, through these genres, challenge the racial stereotypes about Black fatherhood found in policies, public discourses, and the political arenas. It also examines how this contemporary representation constructs a new cultural identity for Black fatherhood. I argue that contemporary African American novels challenge Black fathers’ marginalisation in the American cultural imagination by using popular genres to represent them in diverse manners, like being involved and nurturing, and explaining the reasons behind their inability, shortcomings, and absence in relation to contemporary and historical racial contexts. This analysis is established by closely reading rhetorical strategies related to four popular genres: crime fiction, satire, Gothic, and domestic fiction, in four African American contemporary novels: Before I Forget (2009) by Leonard Pitts Jr., The Sellout (2015) by Paul Beatty, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn Ward and An American Marriage (2018) by Tayari Jones. This analysis shows that genre does not have a fixed formula but an adaptable art that is constantly changing. Black novelists’ creative intervention in popular genres refreshes these genres and contributes to their longevity. This analysis also complicates Obama’s neoliberal dichotomy that brands Black fathers as either responsible and irresponsible, masculine and childish, by illustrating how the Black father characters engage with their children and express their fatherhood in distinctive and creative ways. It undermines the idea of “good” versus “bad” fatherhood to rescue the Black race from loss, as seen in Obama’s rhetoric. Black fathers’ figures are far more complex because they relate to historical and cultural contexts and dynamics.