Revisiting Racial Identity as a Social and Psychological Construction in Edward P. Jones’s Writings

Abstract

This paper aims to study the negotiation of the Black identity that takes place in Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City, The Known World and All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Jones contemplation and his representation of the South in African-American Society using a new technique of geo-tagging is unconventional. The production and definition of the social identity highly relies on the discourse of nationhood. Within the capital of Washington DC, there is significant racial division which subverts the concept of American dream. Using the 21st Century Washington D.C. and its characters Jones has portrayed the denial of justice, opportunity, liberty, equality and fraternity which are the grounding elements of the American Dream. Even though Edward P. Jones affiliates to the great American writers of place like, William Faulkner, John Updike, Sherwood Anderson and Tim Sullivan, Edward P. Jones has made a distinct approach in his technique. While these writers created fictional places in their texts Jones had created myth out of a real place like Washington DC. Every street, every landmark, every house and every landmark mentioned in these texts are real. The association of identity with the place also contributes significantly in the construction of Black identity in these texts. This paper aims to study these facets of American dream and construction of identity in the Pulitzer Prize winning writer Edward P. Jones.