”Being two different people is so exhausting”: Hybridity and Double Consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give

(1)

”Being two different people is so exhausting”: Hybridity and Double Consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U

Give

Roosa Tornikoski, 266887 University of Eastern Finland Faculty of Philosophy

School Humanities

English Language and Culture

(2)

Itä-Suomen yliopisto, Filosofinen tiedekunta Humanistinen osasto

Englannin kieli ja kulttuuri

Tornikoski, Roosa M..: ”Being two different people is so exhausting”: Hybridity and Double Consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give

Opinnäytetutkielma, 62 sivua

Tutkielman ohjaaja: Professori Jopi Nyman Huhtikuu 2021

Asiasanat: Angie Thomas, Viha jonka kylvät, hybriditeetti, kaksitietoisuus, identiteetti, urbaani tila, afrikkalaisamerikkalaisuus

Tämä tutkielma keskittyy tutkimaan hybriditeettiä ja kaksitietoisuutta Angie Thomasin romaanissa Viha jonka kylvät. Tutkielman tavoitteena on osoittaa, miten urbaanit ja kulttuuriset tilat vaikuttavat henkilön identiteetin rakentumiseen ja lopulta johtavat hybridin identiteetin hyväksymiseen. Teksti lähestyy tätä kysymystä analysoimalla romaanin eri urbaaneja tiloja sekä kulttuurisia ympäristöjä. Lisäksi tutkielma tarkastelee sitä, kuinka romaanin päähenkilön näkemys itsestään ja muista kirjan hahmoista muuttuu tarinan aikana. Viha jonka kylvät on tarina 16-vuotiaasta Starr Carterista, joka todistaa ystävänsä kuoleman.

Tämä saa hänet kyseenalaistamaan oman asemansa yhteiskunnassa ja etsimään omaa identiteettiään.

Kirjan tapahtumissa on samankaltaisuuksia monien viime aikoina tapahtuneiden mustien miesten kuolemien kanssa, ja tapahtumat antavat hyvän kuvan niistä tavoista, joilla eri kulttuuriset ryhmät suhtautuvat vastaaviin tilanteisiin Yhdysvalloissa.

Tutkielman teoriaosuus perustuu Homi K. Bhabhan näkemykseen hybriditeetistä sekä W.E.B DuBoisin ajatukseen kaksitietoisuudesta. Lisäksi tutkielma käsittelee afrikkalaisamerikkalaisen kulttuurisen identiteetin piirteitä, kuten kulttuurista traumaa, voidakseen tutkia näiden piirteiden läsnäoloa romaanissa.

Tiivistetysti hybriditeetti kritiikkinä vastaa kysymykseen toiseudesta. Hybriditeettiä tutkittaessa kirjallisuudessa etsitään piirteitä, jotka luovat erilaisuutta ja aiheuttavat henkilön joutumisen kahden kulttuurin väliin, tai liminaaliin kolmanteen tilaan. Hybridisaation prosessi on tämän erilaisuuden hyväksymistä ja eri kulttuuristen piirteiden sovittamista henkilön identiteettiin. Toisaalta kaksitietoisuus on tietoisuutta tästä erilaisuudesta ja sitä, miten henkilö valitsee selviytyä tämän erilaisuuden kanssa. Tässä tutkielmassa hybriditeetin ja kaksitietoisuuden välille on tuotu yhteys mimiikan ja koodinvaihdon kautta.

Tutkielman analyysiosuus ehdottaa, että kaikki nämä yllä mainitut asiat ovat havaittavissa tutkittavassa romaanissa. Tämän osion argumentti on, että eri tilojen ympärillä olevat rajat sekä mustan ja valkoisen kulttuurin erot ovat aiheuttaneet Starrin identiteettien vaihtelun. Analyysi myös esittää, että stereotypiat, joita on syntynyt niin mustassa kuin valkoisessa yhteisössä, luovat kaksitietoisuutta ja siten tarpeen koodinvaihtamiselle. On selvää, että Starr ei tunne täysin kuuluvansa kumpaakaan, ei mustaan eikä valkoiseen, tilaan. Romaanissa on huomattavissa, että Starrin muuttuvat identiteetit ja tilojen joustamattomat rajat aiheuttavat hänelle ahdistusta. Analyysi todistaa, kuinka ystävänsä kuoleman jälkeen ja vanhempien kanssa käytyjen keskustelujen avulla Starr löytää sisäisen tasapainon ja lopulta hyväksyy hybridin identiteettinsä.

(3)

University of Eastern Finland, Philosophical Faculty School of Humanities

English Language and Culture

Tornikoski, Roosa M.: ”Being two different people is so exhausting”: Hybridity and Double Consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give

Thesis, 62 pages

Supervisor(s): Professor Jopi Nyman April 2021

Keywords: Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give, hybridity, double consciousness, identity, urban space, African American

This thesis examines the presence of hybridity and double consciousness in Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the way urban and cultural spaces affect a person’s identity construction and how a hybrid identity is eventually accepted. This is approached by examining the different spatial descriptions and cultural environments present in the novel. Additionally, the thesis shows how the main character’s view of herself and the people around her shifts during the novel. The Hate U Give is the story of 16-year-old Starr Carter who witnesses the death of her friend. This leads her to question her position in society and on a quest of learning to know her identity. The events in the novel are parallel to many of the deaths of young black men, and it presents an accurate picture of how these events are often received by the different cultural groups in the United States of America.

The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on Homi K. Bhabha’s definitions of hybridity, liminality, and mimicry, as well as the notion of double consciousness as characterized by W.E.B. DuBois.

Additionally, African American cultural identity and some of its cultural elements are discussed in order to establish what cultural features are to be analyzed in the novel. Briefly put, hybridity as a critique addresses the problem of difference. When examining hybridity in literary works, what is sought are elements that create difference and cause one to live in the space in-betweenness, or in the liminal Third Space. The process of hybridization is a way to accept this difference and incorporate the different cultures into one’s identity. Double consciousness, on the other hand, addresses the awareness of this difference, and how one chooses to cope with this difference. In this thesis, hybridity and double consciousness are linked together through mimicry and code-switching.

The analytical section suggests that the abovementioned features can be tracked in the novel. The analysis argues that the borders between specific spaces, and the differences between black and white cultures, have caused Starr to resort to switching between two identities. It is also suggested that the stereotypes, stemming from both black and white communities, create double consciousness, and thus, a need for code-switching. It is made clear, that although Starr is black and studies at a white school, she does not feel that she fully belongs to either space. Through-out the novel, however, it is clear that these shifting identities and rigid boundaries cause anxiety in the main character. The analysis shows how, fuelled by the death of her friend and through educational conversations with her parents, Starr finds balance in herself

(4)

1. Introduction

After Barack Obama was elected as President of the United States in 2008, many started praising the country for its allegedly post-racial society and how it had finally overcome its difficulties with racism and discrimination (Love and Tosolt 20). According to many views, race no longer existed, and people had become color-blind (Dawson and Bodo 247). However, many events during and since Obama’s election have proven that such post-racial America does not yet exist. Nancy Denton states: “the fact that discrimination and prejudice have become more subtle and more polite since the civil rights movement does not mean that they have gone away” (96). Police brutality is present and often racially motivated, harmful stereotypes are held and distributed, and black people still have to be aware of their surroundings and accordingly accommodate to them;

even President Obama received racist threats during his presidency (Dawson and Bodo 247).

Furthermore, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and more recent events during the last year of his presidency have solidified the notion that racial neutrality has not been achieved. Donald Trump even spoke of “the good old days” during many of his rallies as to reference when more violent actions were taken against rioters.

“See, in the good old days this doesn’t happen,” Trump told his fans, “because they used to treat them very, very rough. And when they protested once, you know, they would not do it again so easily. But today they walk in and they put their hand up and they put the wrong finger in the air at everybody and they get away with murder because we’ve become weak, we’ve become weak.” (qtd. in Mackey)

Oftentimes, literature is a response to the issues and injustices of the current society. As long as America has not achieved racial neutrality, literary works pointing out the social injustices towards racialized people will emerge.

African American arts and literature in particular are often characterized by the use of strong traditional aspects. For example, August Wilson, a renowned African American playwright, known for such works as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1982) and Fences (1987), is famous for his use of oral tradition in his plays: “Wilson’s use of the African oral tradition comes from his insistence on a distinctive African American drama, necessary because, the playwright holds, white society does

(6)

Because African Americans have had a complicated history with the United States of America, their literature often reflects similar themes. In his book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993) Paul Gilroy writes about black literary practices, used by Toni Morrison and others, of remembering slavery and why it is important:

Her work points to and celebrates some of the strategies for summoning up the past devised by black writers whose minority modernism can be defined precisely through its imaginative proximity to forms of terror that surpass understanding and lead back from contemporary racial violence, through lynching, towards the temporal and ontological rupture of the middle passage. (222)

According to Gilroy, common issues that are discussed within the literature of the black diaspora include the trauma of slavery and how it still affects life (202). These effects include, but are not limited to, the reactions and attitudes of both the white majority and the black minority towards the racial injustices in the United States as also seen in Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give (2017). This thesis explores hybridity and double consciousness in the African American identity from the viewpoint of The Hate U Give. In this thesis, I will show through Thomas’s work how these above-mentioned aspects can be seen in black literature and furthermore in the construction of a hybrid identity.

1.1 Aims and Structure

This thesis will analyze hybridity and double consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (2017). The aim is to show how living in between cultures and encountering a traumatic experience can bring an identity into crisis and force the subject to leave their liminal state and accept their hybrid identity. I will approach this by analyzing the remarks the narrator and main character of the novel Starr makes while she goes through her transformation. How is it clear that she has not fully accepted her identity? What obstacles might there be? What steps does she take to start accepting her hybrid identity, and how does she finally find balance? The goal is to find elements of Starr’s double consciousness, liminality, and hybridity, and how cultural elements or practices might affect her hybridization. What actions does she take to either stand out or blend in? Do the

(7)

other characters in the story show similar tendencies? Once I have answered these questions, a conclusion can be made on how these same qualities could be found in a person with a similar background as Starr.

The structure of this thesis is as follows: first, I will present the theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter Two will begin with the concepts of double consciousness and hybridity in the context of African American identity. This chapter defines the concept of hybridity, and more specifically that of cultural hybridity, as it is needed for the analysis of the novel. Also, the notion double consciousness will be assessed, and an explanation on how hybridity and double consciousness as concepts support each other will be included. A discussion on urban spaces will be linked to hybridity and double consciousness. Following this, a discussion of African American identity will be presented. This section addresses cultural identity and provides an overlook on African American cultural aspects. After the presentation of the theoretical framework, the thesis moves on to analyze the novel in Chapter Three where hybridity and double consciousness play a major role in the characters’ identities. With the support of the theories, such issues as the use of slang, pop culture references, dialogue, and contrasting environments will help determine the hybridity and duality of the characters’ identities and how their everyday actions showcase these aspects. Using these concepts in the analysis of the text, this thesis will aim to show how hybridity is present in the African American identity. The thesis will close with a concluding chapter.

1.2 Materials

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was published in 2017. The novel is Thomas’s debut novel and a number-one New York Times best-seller. The story was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, “whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes” (blacklivesmatter.com).

Thomas has been awarded several awards for the novel, for example, the William C Morris and The Coretta Scott King awards in 2018. On the other hand, the book was also banned in Texas for its “racially insensitive language” (Rose). In October 2018, a critically acclaimed motion picture based on the novel was released, directed by George Tillman Jr. and featuring such actors as

(8)

Amandla Stenberg, Russell Hornsby and Regina Hall. From now on the novel will be referred to as either The Hate U Give or THUG.

The major themes in the novel include, for example, double consciousness, racism and police violence, the cycle of poverty, and loyalty. While this thesis focuses specifically on the characters’ hybridity and double consciousness, all these themes are important to the structure and the character development of the novel, which is why most of them will be addressed on some level in this thesis.

The Hate U Give is the story of Starr Carter, a 16-year-old African American girl who witnesses the killing of her childhood friend, Khalil, in the hands of a white police officer. This event brings her identity into a crisis and leads her to think about the choices she makes in her everyday life.

Through-out the novel, the reader can notice Starr embracing her blackness and her ancestry, becoming more aware of the way her friends treat and see her, and finally finding her place in the society. One of the defining moments in the novel occurs when Starr confronts her friend about her racist comments and engages in a physical altercation with her.

Thomas begins the novel with a description of a party at Garden Heights, the ‘ghetto’ that Starr and her family live in. It becomes clear that this party is a regular event during the last days of the spring break, but Starr has never attended one before. It appears she has not kept in touch with most of her acquaintances from Garden Heights after attending Williamson Prep, her predominantly white school. She already feels as if she does not belong, and this is not because she thinks she is better than others: “There are just some places where it’s not enough to be me.

Either version of me. Big D’s party is one of those places” (7). Since the beginning, Starr makes it clear that there are two sides to her, and neither of them seems to be quite what is expected of her.

In addition to Starr, the other main characters include Starr’s parents Maverick and Lisa Carter, who have been together since their adolescence, her older half-brother Seven and little brother 8-year-old Sekani. Starr’s friends include Kenya, who Starr has known since she was a child and who is also a half-sister to Seven, Hayley, a white girl from Williamson, and Maya, an Asian American girl Starr has known since the seventh grade. Starr is also dating a white boy from her class, Chris, whose rich family lives in the suburbs. Other characters include Starr’s uncle Carlos, who is a police officer, DeVante, a boy who is trying to escape gang-life, and the human-rights lawyer Miss Ofrah, who is helping Starr with her statement on Khalil’s death for the grand jury.

(9)

In my view, the novel can be seen as an accurate representation of many contemporary struggles that African Americans face. Because the novel is quite recent, not much research has been conducted on it. Lately articles such as “Finding the ‘Herstorical’ Narrative in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give” (2020) by Adam Levin and “Adolescence, Blackness, and the Politics of Respectability in Monster and The Hate U Give” (2019) by Gabrielle Owen have been published. Both of these texts approach the novel from the point of view of activism, gender, race and age. Levin aims to “demonstrate how Thomas […] illuminates how African American young adult fiction provides a crucial space through which to both engage with Black girls’ narratives and contribute to the processes of communal and societal change for which Black Lives Matter advocates” (152).

Owen, on the other hand, states she is “interested in textual negotiations within and against normativity, the ways fictional representations invite readers to think and know, to participate in existing logics or push against them” (238). While there little research on the novel available, the societal issues raised in the novel are timely and give a good reason for writing this thesis.

(10)

2. Theoretical Framework

This chapter addresses the theoretical framework of the thesis. It is structured as follows: first I will introduce hybridity as a theory and discuss related topics such as liminality and mimicry. I will define why these are of essence in the case of this thesis. After this I will present the concept of double consciousness, discuss how it relates to hybridity and identity, and why it is important for this thesis. Next, cultural identity, and more specifically African American identity, will be discussed. I will present such matters as cultural memory and cultural trauma and how these contribute to the formation of a cultural identity. I will also present some features of African American culture that have significance in the analysis of The Hate U Give.

Hybridity has been used to address similar topics in the past. In the analysis of post-colonial and diasporic fiction, cultural hybridity and hybrid identities are common points of discussion. In literary analysis, researchers “focus […] on the suppression and resistance of social as well as cultural minorities amid the present global condition” (Ackerman 5). Often the attention is on how the characters in these works adjust to their situation, and the obstacles? Usually features that point out this process are taken under examination. Many studies, some of which are mentioned below, observe the steps the characters take to find balance so that they are able to accept their position in society. Hybridity can occur in narrative styles, linguistic features, stylistic choices, but it can also be implemented into the themes, motifs, identities, events and environments of the novel.

In Home, Identity, and Mobility in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction (2009) Jopi Nyman points out several instances that show hybridization or identity construction in diasporic literature. In the chapter addressing Crescent, a novel by Diana Abu-Jaber (2003), Nyman notes that cultural hybridization and identity construction can, among other things, be observed through memory and trauma and the storytelling connected to them (190). Additionally, he states that, particularly in Crescent, hybrid identity can be detected through affectuality, emotions and dilemmas, as well as symbolic elements such as food and holiday traditions (187, 194-5).

As with Crescent, diasporic literature of the colonized, immigrants, and otherwise marginalized people often focuses on identity construction or acceptance. Coming to terms with a hybrid identity is also in the focus of the article “Liminality, Hybridity and ‘Third Space’: Bessie

(11)

Head’s A Question of Power” (2018) written by Sayyed Rahim Moosavinia and Sayyede Maryam Hosseini. The article states:

hybridity in AQP is not only biological, neither is it only limited to colonial structure. There exists a complex nexus of power and liminality operating within the novel. Here, it is used in relation to Elizabeth’s position as ‘neither white nor black enough,’ to her life ‘on the edge of Kalahari Desert,’ to her Edenic garden, her body, and even to her identification with the entire universe. This in-between location becomes a space for the protagonist to overcome her traumatic experiences and schizoid self as Fanon informs and to recollect her sanity. (338)

Thus, it cannot be said that hybridity in literature is one specific issue. Neither can it be said that hybrid identities are all constructed in the same way. It can, however, be stated that literature on hybrid people and even hybrid identities have similar characteristics. In “The Hypocrisy of Completeness: Toni Morrison and the Conception of the Other” (1995), Cameron McCarthy and others explain how “In response to the received tradition of the Western novel, the hybridizing process in postcolonial fiction involves the following three dynamics” (249):

First, there is a reflexive and self-conscious attitude toward the use of language and its imbrication in narrative omniscience and surveillance. An additional concern here is the role of language in the elaboration of unequal identities. Secondly, there is a deliberate deflation of characterization and the installation of anti-heroic, flawed, or broken personas at the epicenter of the novel's discursive field (McCarthy, 1994). It is in this movement from the margins to the center that the Empire's ragged and tagged strike back. Thirdly, the subject matter explored in these novels tends to have a socio-political resonance that takes us beyond the nexus of individual adventure, fate and fortune, and toward an exploration of problems associated with the relationship of the individual to community. (249, reference original)

As I will show later, all three of these qualities can be observed in The Hate U Give.

As THUG is set in a fictional world it cannot be fully used as a representation of a real-world experience. However, it cannot be said that the novel was born in a vacuum. As a black woman in the United Sates, she has insider knowledge on how society works against black people in many

(12)

So many black kids are put in that position, so I wanted to show that there is no one way to talk black. There is a stereotype that if you sound ghetto, and you use a lot of slang, that makes you black. I wanted to show this girl who exists in these two different worlds.

Which Starr is the real Starr? There are so many adults who identify with that, too. I went through it myself when I was in college. Especially for young POC, when we enter majority- white spaces, we feel the need to assimilate, to blend in, to prove ourselves. (Evans) In this thesis I will use THUG as a representation of a specified experience of blackness in America. I cannot assume all African Americans feel as Starr does. And thus, this thesis will focus on the formation of a hybrid identity through the case of an African American adolescent who closely engages with their peers with a completely different starting point as the main character does.

2.1. Hybrid Identities

Black people in the United States have, without a doubt, established their own culture and traditions over the past centuries. Moreover, they also embrace the usual American traditions, such as Thanksgiving and other celebrations that have roots in the United States and are not excluded from any of the popular American celebrations. All the while, aspects of African American culture, such as music and other arts, have simultaneously affected the general American culture.

Since many African Americans struggle to find harmony between black and white cultures, theories of hybridity and double consciousness can be used to analyze both the sociological aspects of black American culture and matters of identity in literature.

As mentioned in the introduction, the idea of hybridity is linked to postcolonial literary analysis and is used to analyze the mixing of several cultures. However, speaking of hybridity as simply a blending of two cultures would not give an accurate depiction of it. According to Homi K.

Bhabha, best known as the key theorist who introduced the term hybridity into sociology and cultural research, there are no different cultures; each “culture” is the reaction to something, for example colonialism, and the by-product of this phenomenon, such as colonization, is some unified form of the traditions, manners and languages of the colonizers and the colonized. In addition to this, there are several sub-categories to hybridity, such as religious, linguistic, literary,

(13)

cultural and racial hybridity, the latter of which can generally be declared out-of-date when it comes to humans (Singh). For the purpose of this thesis, the focus will be on cultural hybridity.

Comparable to hybridity as a theory is double consciousness, a term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois. W. E. B. Du Bois was an African American social activist and renowned scholar who worked towards the advancement of the position of African Americans in society. In his book Souls of Black Folk (1903) he writes: “One ever feels his two-ness, –– an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (8). Double consciousness is what is created by living in a racist society in which one must learn to visualize themselves through the eyes of both the major ethnic group as well as the members of one’s own minority group. Kevin L. Wright has studied the perception of double consciousness among black students and writes in his article “The Relevance of Double Consciousness among Black Males in College” (2018): “Double consciousness creates a balancing act among folks to meet the standards of how they perceive themselves. This matter then creates invisible boundaries for an individual to navigate through society” (71). Therefore, double consciousness can be defined as the act of trying to find balance between two identities.

Often, within the African American community, this means being conscious of self and other and how they relate to each other. As stated earlier, black identity can be split between the way black individuals perceive themselves and the way they assume they are seen by others around them.

In literary studies hybridity as a theory is most used in postcolonial criticism. This would involve literature from migrant stories to stories about communities strongly affected by oppressive colonial practices such as African Americans.

2.1.1 Hybridity

According to many sources, in the context of biology, from where the term originates, the term hybridity means the result of a crossbreeding of two species (Kuortti and Nyman 4; Singh; Smith 4). Earlier in sociology, the term hybridity has been used to mean either creolization and mixing of languages or the interbreeding of two races (Kuortti and Nyman 4). Later Homi K. Bhabha introduced it to be used as a tool to study colonized identities. As Nestor Garcia-Canclini writes,

(14)

influence, and the term can refer to ethnicity, language or culture (7095). African Americans are not a colonized people as such, but their presence in the United States today is largely due to the colonial practices of slavery. Similarly formed communities are sometimes called “internal colonies” (Bush 129). In contemporary analysis hybridity is not as much a tool, as it is a theory.

Moreover, many analytical tools can be used to analyze the presence of hybridity in fiction.

Hybridity as a means of critique addresses the problem of difference. This difference “can be temporal, political, racial, sexual, social or economic” (Werbner and Modood ix). Cultural hybridity answers the question of how different cultures link and intercept due to collisions of ethnicities, cultures, religions or even languages.

Cultural hybridity can also create hybridity in the identities of people whose families are from two different cultures or whose cultural background is somehow different from the majority of the population (Smith 4). These people can be referred to as culturally hybrid. In this sense, hybrid people “include hybrid groups like the Anglo-Irish, the Anglo-Indians and the African-Americans”

(Burke 30). As is written in “So There it Is” by Brigitte Wallinger-Schorn, “identity refers to something

“coherent” and unified, whereas Asian Americans, African Americans, Chicano Americans, etc.

have a subjectivity based on more than one culture” (34). In addition, as Joel Kuortti and Jopi Nyman suggest: “Cultural hybridity is not only a question of combining different ingredients together to form and celebrate a hyphenated identity, but its analyses show different migrations and mobilities problematizing the histories of contemporary identities” (8).

Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Emily Brooke Barko state in their essay “Neither Black Nor White Enough – and Beyond Black or White: The Lived Experiences of African-American Women at Predominantly White Colleges” that “some students of color […] remark on identity dilemmas stemming from differences in social class upbringing that make them appear ‘too white’ to certain groups of color and not ‘white enough’ for their white peers. These conundrums often affect their sense of racial identity” (198). Hybrid identity and cultural hybridity are both present in the novel, which is why hybridity is an important theoretical concept in the context of this thesis.

Cultural hybridity is connected to the attempt of finding balance between two or more cultures and their values and customs (Albert and Paéz 522). In the process of cultural hybridization, a new identity is constructed, which reflects the duality of the person. As Keri E. Iyall Smith writes on George Simmel’s concept of the stranger in the introduction to Hybrid Identities:

Theoretical and Empirical Examinations:

(15)

Strangers are simultaneously members of the community and not members of the community. The stranger is one new identity that might emerge by combining two identities that were previously discrete and now overlap. They are not seen as individuals, but as a particular type that is a combination of the stranger’s identity and the local identity. One resolution to the problem of having two identities, or being identified by types and labels, is to create a new identity. It is the hybrid identity that includes a local and global identity form, merged to create the hybrid identity. (4)

Although most cultures are hybrid to some degree, hybridity is more prominent in cultures that have historically undergone a power conflict. It is inevitable that during a power struggle new cultures will be produced consequently (Huddart 125). Different cultures are not the source of conflicts but instead aftereffects of discriminating practices. According to Homi K. Bhabha in Location of Culture, “It is in the emergence of the interstices – the overlap and displacement of domains of difference – that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest or cultural value are negotiated” (2). Bhabha’s most important contribution to the field is that the “intercultural space where hybridity happens is a space of in-betweenness and liminality” (Kuortti and Nyman 8). According to Bhabha, hybridity:

is not a third term that resolves the tension between two cultures […] in a dialectical play of ‘recognition’. The displacement from symbol to sign creates a crisis for ant concept of authority based on a system of recognition: colonial specularity, doubly inscribed, does not produce a mirror where the self apprehends itself; it is always the split screen of the self and its doubling, the hybrid. (114-115)

This implies that the hybrid subject will identify with both “us” and “them” but might never fully be a part of either. The hybrid will be mirroring themselves through the expectations of others around them, both the dominant and subordinate culture.

When studying hybrid identities, the idea of liminality is often used to signify a moment in a person’s life when they have exited a previous state of being and are on their way to accepting their new identity. It is said liminality is essential for identity growth, however, in many cases, quite hard to endure (Ibarra and Obodaru 55).

Liminality as a term has many varied meanings, making it important to define the use of the term in the context of this thesis. “At its broadest, liminality refers to any ‘betwixt and between’

(16)

situation or object, any in-between place or moment, a state of suspense, a moment of freedom between two structured world-views or institutional arrangements” (Thomassen 7). Liminality can be understood as a state of living in-between. Liminality can also be connected to spaces that form a character’s identity. The term liminal, first used by French ethnographer and folklorist Arnold Van Gennep, simply means in-between, or on the border. Van Gennep connected liminality to rites of passage or coming of age rituals (Shure). As is explained by Charles La Shure: “The initiate (that is, the person undergoing the ritual) is first stripped of the social status that he or she possessed before the ritual, inducted into the liminal period of transition, and finally given his or her new status and reassimilated into society” (n.p.).

In this thesis, liminality is used in the way Bhabha has used it to describe the hybridization of an individual. The liminal space, or the Third Space, is where hybridity occurs after they have been stripped of their previous identity and are ready to come to terms with their new hybrid identity. For the most part, liminality will be analyzed in Starr’s character and in the spaces and racial environments she functions in.

In Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, two cultures can only interact in a neutral space void of any afflictions from either side. This space he has defined the Third Space, where cultural hybridization happens. What is central to the emergence of new cultural meaning is liminality, or what happens in-between “settled cultural forms or identities” (Huddart 7). As Kuortti and Nyman write, “To put his complicated argument simply, in what Bhabha calls the ‘Third Space of enunciation,’ the liminal space between the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized, migrants and other (post)colonial subjects go through a process that recasts their fixed sense of identity” (8). In the Third Space new identities are formed and transformed and continuously in a state of becoming. To Bhabha, the Third Space is a liminal space in which cultural difference can be negotiated in accordance with the self and the other. Homi K. Bhabha writes:

For me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‘third space’ which enables other positions to emerge. This third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom. (Rutherford 211)

(17)

Mimicry, like liminality, is also a term closely linked with hybridity. It is the act of seeking to fit in by mimicking the values and attitudes of the colonizing party. According to Huddart, mimicry can also be said to be a reaction to the distribution of stereotypes (58). Bhabha claims that mimicry exposes the artificial constructions of power by proving that the colonized can also blend in with the colonizers, at least in matters of speech, intellectuality and values.

[C]olonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say, that the discourse of mimicry constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference. (Bhabha 86; emphasis original) Colonizers were in need of educated, ‘well mannered’ colonial subjects, but they could not be identical to the colonizer. They would need to reverse to their own culture, speech, and manners from time to time, or the power structures of colonialism would be brought down by proving them wrong. Colonialism is justified by an imagined need to reform and educate, and if it is established as possible that Indians or Africans could match the intellectuality of the English or French, then the premises for colonizing would be proven false (Huddart 59).

Since hybridity as a whole is quite complex, in this section I have attempted to highlight the aspects of hybridity I perceive as most important to this thesis. Liminality is essential to hybridization, and it could be said that a balanced hybrid identity cannot be achieved without liminality. As for mimicry, in my view it is as much a learned tool as it is an unconscious attempt of fitting in different social environments. A slightly more practical approach to mimicry will be applied later in connection with discussion of the notion of double consciousness.

2.1.2 Double Consciousness

This chapter will deal with the concept of double consciousness, often associated with African American identities. As mentioned earlier, the African American people can be seen as an ‘internal colony’. According to Roderick Bush:

Such people almost always develop […] a double consciousness, which gives them a special insight about the dominant culture not easily accessed by those who view their own

(18)

societies only from the perspective of the dominant culture. The hybrid culture then becomes a source of agency that is important in the ability to impact change within these societies. (130)

Double consciousness has been described as “The struggle for both inclusion and self-definition, that characterizes aspects of black life and black culture” (Davidson 29). In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois characterized the term double consciousness to refer to how African Americans navigate their identity between black and white perception: “African and American, offered another possibility, one that implied loyalty to a nation but not necessarily to its dominant culture or way of life”

(Eyerman, “Cultural Trauma” 62-63; emphasis original). Double consciousness creates an element of conflict within the black American as they struggle to reconcile their identity as a black person and as an American citizen in white spaces.

According to Judith R. Blau and Eric S. Brown, W. E. B. Du Bois specified the phrase double consciousness to refer to the twoness of African Americans navigating in a discriminating dominantly white world (43). Du Bois argued that because black Americans have historically lived in a society that has systemically oppressed and devalued them, unifying their black identity with their American identity is difficult (44). Du Bois also claims that double consciousness forces blacks to view themselves not only from their own unique perspective, but also from the perspective of the (white) outer society (Dickens 20).

Double consciousness and hybridity are quite similar concepts. Cultural hybridity can (and often does) manifest as the adaptation of different customs from the cultures that influence a person. For example, Chinese Americans might celebrate Thanksgiving or Halloween as well as Chinese New Year, and families in which one parent is Jewish and other non-Jewish might choose to celebrate both Hannukah and Christmas. Hybridity can of course manifest in other parts of life outside of celebrations. Hybridity can be seen in language, food habits and religious customs (Burke 21).

Individuals from hybrid groups that have had to adapt to multiple cultures may have difficulties adjusting to the majority of the population. Take, for example, African Americans, who have been mistreated in America for several hundreds of years. Even after years of living in the United States of America, being a big part of its history and culture they are discriminated and left to the margins. Because of this, African Americans are constantly aware of how the white population might view them, and how their actions and choices make them look in the eyes of

(19)

white people. And yet at the same time, there are certain unwritten rules of how blacks should act and be without being ‘sell-outs’ or traitors to their own race. This notion of how one is perceived by different communities is what double consciousness is in its core. Kevin L. Wright conducted interviews for his article, according to which double consciousness is still relevant and applies to many communities. The interviewees revealed that their double consciousness also applies in their own communities: “If Black people are not living up to a standard within their own Black community, or living up to the standards of another racial community, they are not perceived as Black” (Wright 71). All communities have certain sets of rules, which, if broken, make the deviant the outsider. These rules could be as simple as listening to certain types of music or playing certain types of sports.

Double consciousness in African Americans has been studied quite extensively in academic settings. How do black students feel studying in schools where the majority of the students are white? Do black faculty members feel the need to “act whiter” in predominantly white working situations? These questions were asked in Kevin L. Wright’s article mentioned earlier. In his research Wright argued that black students and faculty members are more likely to focus on proving their credibility when at a predominantly white environment.

Repeatedly, many of the statements from students indicated double consciousness as a struggle because they wanted to prove how much they did not fit a stereotype. These students went to class knowing their White counterparts already have a preconceived idea of them, and the students cannot do anything else, but prove their White counterparts wrong. (70)

So, while a black person might be trying to break free of the stereotypes the white America has established and some still believe to be true, they might have to seem less ‘white’ around their racial peers in order to be accepted among them. A black person trying to find their place may have to constantly be proving themselves to the white majority and their own community. They are both black and American, but the struggle of finding the perfect balance for each individual is the essence of double consciousness.

One of the tools used to break stereotypes and survive in “mainstream society” is code- switching (Lovell et al. 74). It is common to find black Americans switching between African American English and Standard English (Britannica Academic). Code-switching requires awareness

(20)

of the views society has of the way one should act, which is why it is closely associated with double consciousness (Lovell et al. 74). According to a study by Pew Research Center, 53 per cent of “black college graduates under the age 50” feel the need to code-switch around people from other racial or ethnic backgrounds: “Younger black adults are more likely than their older counterparts to report feeling the need to switch how they express themselves when they are among people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds” (pewresearch.org).

Practicing code-switching is not limited to black Americans only, it also affects other hybrid groups:

Hao (2016) asserts that his experience as a diasporic hybrid influenced his sense of belonging as situational context forced him to vacillate between his Chinese and Filipino identities. Bilingual Latinos report they are often criticized by other bilingual speakers for mixing Spanish and English, sometimes referred to as Spanglish, as their primary language practice (Casielles-Suárez, 2017). They, too, are required to shift to the White man’s English, and they are required to speak a “pure” Spanish among monolingual Latinos (Casielles-Suárez, 2017). (Myers 113; references original)

By mimicking the speech patterns, vocabulary, manners and values of the ‘more powerful group’, one can seek to feel more accepted in situations involving representatives of the more powerful group. “Mimicry is not slavish imitation, and the colonized is not being assimilated into the supposedly dominant or even superior culture. […] Mimicry as Bhabha understands it is an exaggerated copying of language, culture, manners and ideas” (Huddart 57). Thus, it could be said that code-switching is a form of mimicry.

Code-switching as a practice stems from societies discriminating certain types of behavior or linguistic attributes. This creates the need for minorities to learn to speak and act in a way that will seem more acceptable to the majority, and thus make it easier to survive in various social situations. Many scholars argue that the code-switching only enforces racist practices and that society should strive towards accepting all registers of English in academic and professional setting as well as at home (McCluney et al.; Young 57). In literature, code-switching has a major role in emphasizing identity negotiation and finding one’s place in society (Casagranda 79). As Casagranda states: “it is also a way to express the speaker’s identity and the way of representing her/himself and interact with other people” (81).

(21)

There are many similarities between double consciousness and hybridity. The reason both are introduced as separate issues in this thesis is because in the context of this research both can be observed in different ways in the novel. It appears that double consciousness, in particular, defines the conflicts of African American identity construction, in regard to resistance and struggling to find balance. Systemic oppression is what creates the need for double consciousness, and the process hybridization is one way an individual can start to resist this need and finally find balance within themselves. The following chapter will discuss the importance of urban space in literature and identity construction.

2.1.3 Urban Spaces

Cities, the cityscape and city culture have been subject of study for some time. Urban spatial studies for example are associated with postmodern literature and film analysis. Recently urban spaces have been started to be studied as the liminal spaces of culture or the Third Space and are thus relevant for the formation of hybrid identities. Julia Sattler writes:

The literary city becomes a place where different identities are re-negotiated;

transnational renditions of American cities are shaped by migration, travel and displacement. The hybridization of urban spaces becomes specifically evident in scholarship on immigrant communities and their contributions to shaping American urbanities, specifically in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (14)

Urban spaces also act as the birthplace for urban culture created by the people occupying them.

As Sattler states: “Urban spaces have for a long time been considered multilayered sites in which different historical, spatial and narrative layers have collided, merged, combined, and re- combined” (16). Urban cultures reflect the culture and identity of the community in which it was born in. As the novel showcases several different urban environments, the cultures also have variety.

According to Elijah Anderson, since the emancipation, blacks, and other minorities in America, have been forced to live in urban spaces previously occupied by whites (n.p.). Often it

(22)

was made impossible for minorities to move into areas that were considered better by threatening anyone trying to move there or by simply not selling to blacks (Mendenhall 24). As Mendenhall writes:

some real estate agents would purchase homes and sell or rent them to blacks in an often profitable process called blockbusting. As blacks moved into these neighborhoods, whites started to sell their homes at lower prices to realtors who then charged blacks inflated prices far in excess of the assessed value of the real estate. (25)

Since cities used their own housing policies to determine where a person could own a house, this segregation has created poorer areas where many minorities reside. Due to the urban renewal program of 1954, predominantly black residential areas that were too close to affluent white neighborhoods hoping to grow, were “bulldozed, and massive public housing projects were built in order to contain displaced black residents” (Zonta 5). Furthermore, “In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated” (Coates). Today, there are big differences in the property values in different neighborhoods.

Despite the economic and political gains that African Americans have achieved since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, significant disparities still exist between African Americans and non-Hispanic whites in terms of access to homeownership, quality education, and employment, among other assets. These disparities are reflected in persisting residential segregation and a racially segmented housing market—and they have significant implications for African Americans’ economic mobility. (Zonta 1)

Segregational housing is only one more way for the white population in the United States to gain power over minority groups.

questions of (il)legibility and (in)visibility are implicated in representation as struggles for power and identity. This is perhaps most obviously marked in the categories of spatial duality – of inside and outside, of self and other – which often work to naturalize the symbolic order of the city, reproducing social divisions and power relations. The operations of power are everywhere evident in space, for space is hierarchical – zoned, segregated, gated – and encodes both freedoms and restrictions – of mobility, of access, of vision – in the city. (Balshaw and Kennedy 11)

(23)

The history of housing politics is important in the context of this thesis, because the living spaces in the novel are divided into the ghetto and the suburbs. It is important to know why this divide still exists, and what the consequences of it can be.

In her article “The Duality of Space: The Built World of Du Bois’ Double-Consciousness” Anna Livia Brand aims to define double consciousness from the viewpoint of spatial theory. She writes:

As a spatial consciousness, double-consciousness illuminates experiences across the veil, elevating ongoing geographic and social racisms that anticipate (and therefore critique) the ways that racial processes are taken up through development paradigms. Beyond its diagnostic lens, double-consciousness communes a fuller breadth of blacks’ experiences, knowledge and hopes, capturing how space is also the site through and in which beauty is revealed and cultivated. Double-consciousness is inherently geographical; it is a duality of space. (5)

Brand explains how urban space is not only a location for gentrification or the normalization of blacks as nonessential members of the society, but “a site where the social, material and symbolic needs of nondominant groups are met and where alternative futures are imagined” (5). Urban spaces are important sites of memory, and essential to identity construction.

In literature, descriptions of cityscapes often do more than just describe surroundings. Many societal, cultural and political levels can be introduced by describing urban environments. This is explained by Petr Chalupsky and Anna Grmelová in their article “Introduction: Urban Spaces in Literature”:

What urban literary works have in common is that they reflect the discursive heteroglossia that resonates in the texture of each city, at the core of which lies an ultimate otherness on the personal, social, cultural and political levels that permeates and determines the modern city dweller's everyday experience. By appropriating, juxtaposing and eventually reconciling distinct, often seemingly incongruous, tendencies and phenomena, the city incites conflicts, controversies and dissonances that find their outspoken vent in various literary renderings. (2)

Especially in urban surroundings, describing the city and different living spaces is an effective way of emphasizing the inequality in society.

(24)

While hybridity and double consciousness explain the formation of mixed identities, urban spaces reflect that heterogeneity through the history, memory and culture of that space. Systemic oppression can be traced as the source for these segregated spaces; however, these spaces have become the locations for resisting oppression and negotiating identities with the past and the future. In the following chapter African American identity will be discussed in more detail.

2.2 African American Identity

In this chapter, African American identity will be addressed from several points of view. The whole concept of African American identity is best understood by studying three issues related to it: it is a cultural identity (section 2.2.1), has a specific cultural memory (section 2.2.3), and is part of African American culture (section 2.3.3). A person’s identity is the combination of their upbringing, cultural background, personal preferences, and their experiences. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the hardship and misery that has followed the African American people for several hundreds of years. The section on African American culture will present some key aspects of especially contemporary African American culture and identity. I will also show how hybridity and identity negotiation are present in African American identity.

2.2.1 Cultural Identity

Cultural identity is the identity of any group that shares a culture, thus African American identity can be defined as a cultural identity. According to Stuart Hall, a renowned cultural theorist, cultural identity refers to the parts of our identities that make us a part of some clear-cut ethnic, racial, or national cultures (Identiteetti 19). In the case of this thesis, cultural identity will be examined from the point of view of African American culture. According to Hall, “cultural identity”, or more specifically, black cultural identity, can be understood in “at least two different ways”:

The first position defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves,’ which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common. Within

(25)

the terms of this definition, our cultural identities reflect the common historical experiences and the shared cultural codes which provide us, as ‘one people,’ with stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meaning, beneath the shifting divisions and vicissitudes of our actual history. This ‘oneness,’ underlying all the other, more superficial differences is the truth, the essence […] of the black experience.

(“Cultural Identity” 223)

Hall states that communities have underlying cultural frames of reference which individuals use to construct their own cultural identity. This often shifts from generation to generation, because the frame of reference changes depending on what the cultural influence of other communities is; cultures are not isolated from outside influence. Yet, according to Hall, Africa is at the center of the black diaspora, giving a name and meaning to the void that can be found in the heart of black identity (“Cultural Identity” 224).

The second way to look at cultural identity “recognises that, as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or rather […] ‘what we have become’” (“Cultural Identity” 225; emphasis original). This means that cultural identity is not only defined by the ‘notion of Africa,’ but it has been shaped by history and culture that have formed since leaving Africa. Although the black diaspora shares Africa as a commonplace of origin for their ancestors, there are differences within the black diaspora. As Hall states, “Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, […] identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (“Cultural Identity” 225). This second view of cultural identity helps us understand the meaning of cultural trauma and collective memory in the black diaspora. African Americans use this shared cultural history to come together and to find strength within their community. It is a defining notion of their culture and identity to have come from slavery and made it as far as they have.

The reason why this shared cultural history is still so significant in their identity is because oppression against black people in the United States is continuously present. Many other communities also have defining historical events that have shaped their identity. For example, many Jewish people could say that the Holocaust is a shared cultural memory within their ethnic group, and it has shaped the way they view the world. The following chapter will discuss the matter

(26)

2.2.2 Cultural Memory

One of the most deep-rooted and significant notions of the cultural identity of African Americans is the memory and trauma of slavery. Although slavery has long since been abolished it is still remembered, feared and pained in the African American community. As belonging to Africa gives the black diaspora their oneness, slavery, and everything it has resulted in also gives African American people their notion of ‘one people’.

While it may seem obvious that slavery as a trauma has shaped the identity of African Americans, the collective African American identity was not established until the 19^th century, when slavery was no longer a personal memory to black people (Eyerman, Cultural Trauma 2). At the time, the personal memory of slavery of the enslaved people had been transformed into a cultural memory of the pain and suffering that the ancestors of African Americans have experienced. As Eyerman explains, “As opposed to psychological or physical trauma, […], cultural trauma refers to a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in social fabric, affecting a group of people that has achieved some degree of cohesion” (Cultural Trauma 2). According to this definition, the trauma has not had to have been experienced directly by any of the members of a community. As stated by Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (1). Not all traumas can be recognized as having such long- standing effects as slavery, which is why it qualifies as a significant event that lives in the memory of the African American community.

Cultural, or collective, memory is vital when defining African American identity, since the way they place themselves in the world as a community and as individual all stems from historical events.

Collective memory is conceived as the outcome of interaction, a conversational process within which individuals locate themselves, where identities are described as the different ways individuals and collectives are positioned by, and position themselves, within narratives. This dialogic process is one of negotiation for both individuals and for the collective itself. (Eyerman, “Cultural Trauma” 66-67)

(27)

This could be interpreted as both individual identities and collective identities of a group of people being in discourse with their past, and their position in the world. It is an ever-evolving process.

Even though the memory of trauma will always be present, the meaning of the trauma changes over the course of time. As was mentioned earlier in the introduction, memory and trauma can become quite important in the negotiation of hybrid identities as well.

To some degree, cultural memory and trauma can be observed in many communities (I dare to claim in most), but as it is essential to the African American identity, it is also addressed in this thesis. Although THUG is not a historical novel, the notion of slavery, or historical oppression, is present in many aspects in the novel. Undoubtedly, African American literary works cannot be analyzed without at least mentioning slavery and its importance to black Americans, their culture, and identity formation. I argue that cultural memory and trauma are central to negotiating identities and hybridization. In the next chapter, I will discuss African American culture in more detail.

2.2.3 African American Culture

Anthropologists Albert L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn define culture as “patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols ... [and may] on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other, conditioning elements of future actions” (qtd. in Jones and Campbell 4; ellipsis and brackets original). According to this definition, the most vital pieces of culture to be studied are: “1) the importance of symbols; 2) the distinction between, but dual validity of implicit meaning and explicit behavior; 3) the historical influence on contemporary events and their meaning; and 4) the dual nature of culture as a template for and a consequence of behavior” (Jones and Campbell 4). Thus, culture is both the source of certain rules for behavior and simultaneously the result of a certain type of behavior.

African American culture can be said to be a multifaceted culture consisting of people of the same ethnic and historical background as most African Americans are either partially or purely of slave descent. Like can be assumed after discussing collective memory, this ancestral background can be a huge driving effect for many of the members of the African American community to keep improving their role in the society. This has induced a “patterned way of thinking” that derives

(28)

from the historical events and misfortunes caused by racially motivated violence. These patterns are not only in the minds of the oppressed but in the minds of the oppressors and are still influenced by racist stereotypes created by the white majority to induce fear within the dominant culture. The knowledge of racial stereotypes enables double consciousness and hybridization. This further supports the idea of understanding African American culture as a hybrid culture.

It has been argued that “an understanding of African American identity must focus on an ethnic and cultural identity that is rooted in an Afrocentric worldview paradigm that critically examines and affirms African cultural values (also referred to as Afrocentric values) as forming the foundation of African American identity and culture” (Cokley 518). Afrocentrism was first created in the United States of America; however, the theory can be seen to apply to all of African diaspora as well as Africa itself. Midas Chewane writes on the nature of Afrocentrism:

As much as the history of Africans in the Americas started in Africa, the general history of Africa can never be complete without the transatlantic slave trade. In addition, there is always a sense of solidarity and constant search by some people of African origin for a common historical mission, for the elements that bind them together as a group, other than a common history of oppression. These elements include the Black Consciousness, Black Power, and Black is Beautiful movements. (84)

This quote describes the hybrid history of the black diaspora. Africa, as Hall stated, is at the heart of black diasporic identity, nevertheless, the slave trade has shaped African identities as well.

Many of the values in the African American community derive from the desire to establish strong communality. One of the best-known movements that influenced African American collective thinking was Black Nationalism. Some of its remainders still influence the black American minds even today (Avilez 11).

Black nationalism is a form of ethnonationalism that supports defining collective identity according to race. Similar to other nationalist movements, it promoted self-definition and self- determination. The movement was central to finding how black Americans could establish their role in the dominant society. The ideology took shape in the 1850s and was particularly powerful in the 1960s and 1970s during the Civil Rights Movement (Encyclopaedia Britannica 228). Although the goal was not to be assimilated with the white majority, the ultimate objective seemed to be to assert the black population as an essential part of the United States of America (Iheduru 214).

(29)

Black nationalism, and Afrocentricity as well as Pan-Africanism, that the Black nationalist ideology is built on, rose from the African American struggle of not being able to achieve ‘the American dream’. Iheduru writes:

The extreme alienation that African Americans faced […] compelled an embrace of African and Afrocentric symbolisms as replacements of what was lacking in Eurocentric values.

[…] The ambiguity lay between the affirmation of an African identity as a means to express the African American struggle against rejection, alienation, and marginalization and actually wanting to be African. (221)

Striving for Africanity after society’s abandonment only further demonstrates the ‘in-betweenness’

of the African American identity. Ideally, the African American identity would find balance between history and the present, without the need to discard certain values in order to embrace others.

The pull between ‘African’ and ‘American’ is what places the identity in the Third Space.

To continue, Afrocentric values emphasize the importance of family and community, encourage spirituality and an emphasis on oral tradition (Constantine et al. 142). Many young African Americans learn how to navigate in a racist society from stories and lessons from their parents and grandparents. These stories can be either uplifting or meant as warnings. One of the most prominent traditions still alive is oral tradition, which can even be seen as practiced through rap-music. Memories, trauma, history and culture are transmitted from generation to generation through stories, as Fleisher writes:

Over time, as stories are told and retold, storytellers revise gossip, rumors, anecdotes, and hearsay by amending the characters, storyline, action, and finale. No matter who’s telling the stories and how often these are repeated, stories transmit cultural knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and rules of behavior, person to person, one generation to the next.

(Fleisher 23)

The oral tradition conveys guidelines on how to act, what to look out for and who or what to trust.

It enforces communality and cultural belongingness through historical accounts.

Memories of inter-personal reliability or untrustworthiness, insults, tragic personal events, and accounts of mutually beneficial relationships are the currency of (…) social life. Currency increases in value in a neighborhood where people see each other often

(30)

travel over social distances at a remarkable speed from person to person (…). (Fleisher 25)

Therefore, stories of how someone’s relative made it from poverty to wealth bring hope, and stories of great adversity create rules for behavior. It is important, especially for young black people, to understand black American history so they can understand the world they live in.

This chapter has shown how valuable many features of African American culture can be to the survival of communities and the identity construction of individuals. My aim here has been to show that, as mentioned earlier, these traits aid in the understanding of history and help enforce communal bonds. Keeping all the discussed aspects in mind, this thesis will now move on to analyze the novel.

”Being two different people is so exhausting”: Hybridity and Double Consciousness in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give