Is Oreo a black text? Ross was surely aware that, while Norman Mailer’s jazz-influenced “White Negro” saw himself as the essence of hip sensibility, secular “black Jews” or any other African Americans who identify themselves intellectually as “people of the book” might be branded as oreos, when literary culture is associated with a “white” heritage. One of the novel’s comic epigraphs quotes the most commonly repeated definition of “oreo”: “Someone who,” like the cookie, “is black on the outside and white on the inside.” However, her protagonist is not a culturally whitewashed, deracinated, or “wannabe white” character who has assimilated European-American cultural styles in order to escape the supposed inferiority of African American culture, or to make herself more acceptable to the mainstream. Oreo claims no cookie-cutter identity; rather, she is a character whose cultural hybridity has given her an intimate view of two of the diverse subcultures that have made significant contributions to the production of American culture. Along with her biracial and bicultural identity, Oreo maintains an abiding interest in the mechanics of identity construction and cultural reproduction. Through Oreo’s adventures, Ross depicts a complex negotiation of identity within a racial, ethnic, sociocultural, and linguistic heterogeneity that extends beyond black and white. While Oreo is visually identifiable and self-identified as African American, the content of her identity is formed dynamically, improvisationally, and contingently as she interacts with others, choosing from a diverse menu of sometimes competing possibilities and influences that vary from one encounter to another.
In Oreo’s interactions with members of both sides of her family, as well as with neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and strangers, Ross’s novel suggests that acculturation is not a one-way street, but is more like a subway system with graffiti-tagged cars that travel uptown as well as downtown, or even more like an interconnected network of multi-lane freeways. Particularly in racially diverse and integrated settings, immigrants of various races and national origins, on their way to becoming American, may emulate the cultural styles of black Americans, since African Americans, though a minority, are as much the founders of American culture as Anglo Americans. Anglos themselves are a minority of white Americans. Oreo’s biracial and bicultural heritage is not so exceptional when one considers that most native-born Americans, regardless of skin color, are products of racial hybridity, just as American culture and language are products of cultural and linguistic hybridity. The significant contribution of black Americans to the national culture includes the problem and challenge that linguistic and cultural difference offer to American democracy, and to the creative production of African-American writers.
Entering the maze of Ross’s imaginatively constructed novel, the reader is reminded that a labyrinth is “an intricate structure of interconnecting passages,” much like the text of Oreo; and also that “labyrinth” is the name given to the internal architecture of the ear, the destination of the spoken word. In this unfortunately overlooked work, Fran Ross lends the reader a remarkable eye for the baffling absurdity of everyday life and a receptive ear for the noisy diversity of the American idiom. Oreo is a text that assumes the verbal intelligence, the linguistic and cultural competence of readers who appreciate the rich diversity that contributes to the complexity of their own identities.
HARRYETTE MULLEN
Biographical information was gathered from Gerald Richard Ross, Gerald Ross, III, Ann Grifalconi, and the Temple University Alumni Association. I gratefully acknowledge all these sources, and I especially appreciate the cooperation of the Ross family, who generously shared their memories and personal documents with me.
Works Cited
Brown, Rita Mae. Rubyfruit Jungle. New York: Bantam Books, 1973.
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Kelley, William Melvin. Dunsfords Travels Everywheres. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970.
Mailer, Norman. The White Negro. San Francisco: City Lights Press, 1957.
Mullen, Harryette. “One Smart, Tough Cookie: The Lit, Grit, and Motherwit of Fran Ross’s Oreo’ (forthcoming article).
Ross, Fran. “Richard Pryor, Richard Pryor.” Essence. April 1979: 70ff.
Wilson, Harriet. Our Nig. New York: Random House, 1983.
Anything this profound philosopher ever said bears repeating.