Mind, Body, and Race in Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun

Abstract

Working at the intersection of cognitive and critical race narratology, the essay examines the relationship between the embodied mind and the social construction of race in Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928/2011). The essay argues that Fauset's African American passing novel rejects the notion of a solely 'inward turn', which is commonly associated with modernist literature, in favor of a more dynamic understanding of embodied cognition that acknowledges the shaping force of race and racialization. Using a seemingly traditional omniscient narrator, Fauset not only draws attention to the failure of U. S. American racial hierarchies, but she also lays bare how race impacts both individual consciousness and social cognition.1