Reading Historicity in Postmodern Biofiction - Barbara Chase-Riboud’s Sally Hemings

Reading Historicity in Postmodern Biofiction

  The curricula in the English departments in Korea have unmistakably diversified. Perhaps a reflection of the individual scholarly interests of those teaching in the colleges/universities in Korea today, English departments are coming up with new names that sound markedly unlike conventional courses. While students today are thus being introduced to "minority" literatures, no doubt a positive change, it seems that we need to consider as well the need to expand the "canon" of minority literature in the Korean undergraduate classrooms. Using as my example the relative unpopularity of postrnodem African American postmodern fiction in Korea, I begin this paper by concentrating on the conflictual relationship between postmodernism and African American literature/literary studies. While aware of the debates against the coupling of the two, I argue that given that the conflict emerges essentially from racist assumptions about minority literature and African American literature specifically, I proceed to make a case for the significance of reading a novel by an African American woman, a writer and her work practically unknown in Korea, Barbara Chase-Riboud"s Sally Hemings(1987), as a postmodern biofiction. In my analysis, rather than engaging in issues of historical (in)accuracy or (un)faithfulness, I focus on the novel as a postmodern bio"fiction." In particular, I examine how the distinctive narratives strategies, such as abrupt narrative shifts and the disruption of time and historical periodization-and the presence of a fictional character, the census taker Nathan Langdon, and his relationship to Hemings from which the entire narrative unfolds-contribute to the subversiveness of Chase-Riboud"s work as a postmodern biofiction.