"The Garies and Their Friends"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the second novel to be published by an African American, "The Garies and Their Friends," written by Frank Webb. It discusses Webb's focus on the lives of middle-class free Blacks and his exploration of the racism of northern white liberals and of the perils of "passing." The paper examines how Webb's novel helps to define an emerging African-American middle class relationship with white America.

From the Paper:

"Given these examples, Clarence cannot be seen as being punished in the narrative merely for the act of passing. Instead, Webb figures the problem with passing as a problem with identity. In order for Clarence to be accepted by whites, he must deny his own history. In contrast, Emily is not passing for either black or white; instead she acknowledges her identity as a child of mixed descent. Fortunately, the Black community is accepting of her status. One could conjecture that if she had to pretend to be only of African descent, she would experience the same torment as her brother. The problem, then, is the denial of the self. Race is merely a construction, but personal history is not. For Clarence to deny his own story is to deny what Hanna Arendt and Adriana Cavarero would term his "who." In her work, Relating Narratives, Cavarero illustrates how every human being "is aware of being a narratable self" (33). The "who" is shown "with clarity in the perception of a narratable self that desires the tale of her own life-story. However it is the other - the friend who recognizes the ontological roots of this desire - who is the only one who can realize such narration" (56). Clarence is hiding part of his story, and therefore his "who" is not being acknowledged."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
• Cavarero, Adriana. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. Trans. Paul A. Kottman. London: Routledge, 2000.
• Culbertson, Roberta. "Embodied Memory, Transcendence, and Telling: Recounting Trauma, Re-establishing the Self." New Literary History, Vol. 26 (1995), 169-95.
• Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
• Duane, Anna M. "Remaking Black Motherhood in Frank J. Webb's The Garies and their Friends." African American Review, (Summer 2004).

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