Romance novels and slave narratives: Kara Walker imagines herself in a book
About this video
Kara Walker explains her early persona as a 'Negress of Noteworthy Talent.' Working in a bookstore after college, she became interested in romance novels and the idea of history, and tried to understand herself as a book, the author of her own narrative like a slave narrative. She describes the source of the 'Negress' figure: a side character in Thomas Dixon Jr.'s novel The Clansman, the basis for The Birth of a Nation, shown as a body and a bad influence on the country.
You'll be able to
- explain how romance novels and slave narratives influenced Walker's idea of herself as a book.
- identify the source of the 'Negress' character Walker refers to.
- explain how the novel reduced the character to a body and a symbol of danger.
Key words
- Slave narrative
- An autobiography written by a formerly enslaved person telling their own story.
- Romance novel
- A popular fiction genre focused on love, often with dramatic historical settings.
- Tertiary character
- A very minor character in a story, third in importance.
- Social mores
- The accepted customs and moral rules of a society.
Transcript
I am a "Negress of Noteworthy Talent Actually, I dont think I ever said I was the Negress (laughs) The work was created by a Negress of Noteworthy Talent While I was still in Atlanta, and I was very I was involved in several sorts of investigations What I wound up doing, what what came out of this psycho moment was trying to understand myself as a book So I was working at a bookstore at the time, after, you know, graduating from college, and kinda interested in romance novels, in some loose way the covers, the designand the the idea of history, some kind of a history that, you know, its weightier And recognizing myself in that, recognizing blackness in that, and femininity and trying to construct myself
as the author of my own narrative, ie slaves narrative The Negress that I refer to is Thomas Dixon Jrs Negress, Tawny Vixen, from The Clansmen, which is the novel, the romantic novel that Birth of a Nation was based on She doesnt have to have real characteristics, she simply has to have a body And that body is is, you know, dark You know, tawny, but thats kind of like swarthy And and she has an illicit seeming relationship with a senator, you know, from the you know, the a vindictive senator whos out to to get the south In the novel, she is this sort of side character, a tertiary character, who is clearly understood by the readers and by the the author to be a bad influence on the direction of the country, potentially
And I think one of the quotes in the body of the book is something like, you know, Would this woman be the arbiter of our social mores? And, you know, its kind of speculating on this unseemly body in the in the height of power
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