Gretchen Martin’s Dancing on the Color Line: African American Trickster in Nineteenth-Century American Literature offers a reinterpretation of some of the most popular works of nineteenth-century southern American literature of the antebellum (pre-Civil War), reconstruction, and post-reconstruction periods. More specifically, it focuses on John Pendleton Kennedy’s Swallow Barn, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Joel Chandler Harris’s short stories, as well as Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Pudd’nhead Wilson. The author dedicates a chapter to each of the texts mentioned above.
Through an impressive and precise analysis of the novels, Martin demonstrates how these white authors borrow from the black aesthetic technique of signifying (also referred to as "Signifyin(g)" or "signifyin'") to represent their black characters. The protagonists using this technique in the literary canon she investigates are often assumed to reflect humorous minstrel types or different stereotypical figures inherited from European traditions: submissive and asexual; immoral, lazy, and stupid; black buffoon; primitive and close to nature; or for women, highly sexualized.
Instead, Martin argues that the black protagonists, signifying verbally or non-verbally, play the role of the trickster, a folk character who manipulates his enemies to get what he wants. In the cases studied, trickster figures use signifying to criticize their situation, to uncover and ridicule white racism and racist ideology, or in some instances, to enable them to run away from slavery. To support her argument, she ingeniously merges sources of literary analysis, folklore, personal narratives of slaves, and history in a meticulous analysis of folklore within the narrative to reveal the complexity of southern American literature starring black people and the cultural exchanges between black and white culture, or as she calls it, “exchanges across the color line” (7). With a dynamic and original reference to a Chris Rock comedy show starting the book, Martin furthermore demonstrates how signifying survives as a significant component of black culture and most importantly, how this technique is not an element of the past but remains grounded in contemporary black cultural practices.
One should note that the readers with little or no knowledge of this particular branch of American literature and American history might need to do a bit of research to understand some terms Martin uses in order to fully appreciate her argument. The usefulness of Dancing on the Color Line in the classroom is unquestionable, but it addresses a more advanced or more specialized readership for the reasons mentioned above. Furthermore, a close reading of the literary works she analyzes would benefit the students.
Dancing on the Color Line is particularly interesting as it reevaluates the concepts of white and black traditions, culture, and identity by challenging the white canon in southern American literature. It also gives a well-deserved active role to some of its most famous black characters and recognizes the fact that black folklore and traditions have found their niche in traditional white literature. From Martin’s work, one can hope that more research focusing on the hybridity of American culture and on the reassessment of the importance of black traditions to American folklore will emerge in the future. With this book, Martin certainly opens a door to a possible break with the myths surrounding racial representation. Finally, it questions how Americans imagine themselves and others, and how history is perceived, depicted, and created. With Dancing on the Color Line, Martin successfully demonstrates that when it comes to culture and cultural expression, things are in fact never just black or white.
--------
[Review length: 578 words • Review posted on September 6, 2018]