The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black-Jewish Imaginary

(Rutgers University Press) Harrison-Kahan looks at literary and cultural texts by Jewish and African-American women, like Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, and Zora Neale Hurston, finding complex stories about Jewishness, African-American identity, and the meanings of whiteness. Through this investigation, she sheds light on the dynamics of interethnic exchange and how they have both produced and undermined the binary of black and white. Harrison-Kahan is an adjunct assistant professor of English at Boston College.