Discussion Questions

Dark Princess

  1. Why does Du Bois dedicate the novel to Titania?
  2. What is the significance of Matthew specializing in obstetrics?
  3. What is the shadow of the color line?
  4. What does it mean when Matthew is described as a Black American chimera?
  5. What are the politics involved in “Afro-Orientalism?”
  1. Why does Du Bois choose the occupation of Pullman porter as central to Mathew’s story in relation to labor? How might we link this to Plessy v. Ferguson?
  2. In the epigraph to Part II what do you make of the use of imagery regarding color and the seasons / temperature / emotion / affect?
  3. With regard to Perigua, how do you see Dark Princess‘ political function as allegory?
  4. List all of the geographies or places that have been mentioned in the novel so far? What would a map of these locations look like? What connections do you see between the urban and the rural , plantation economies and metropolitan economies?
  5. How would you describe the romance between Matthew and Kautilya?

 

  1. How are the economies of the geographies of the various cities Mathew traverses (Harlem, Berlin, Chicago) connected to the rural U.S. South?
  2. How would you characterize the kinship between Kautilya and Matthew’s mother?
  3. Define profeminism
  4. In his landmark book The Black Atlantic cultural critic Paul Gilroy describes Dark Princess as important to the political project of the black Atlantic. He writes, “Read as a beginning rather than an ending, it offers an image of hybridity and intermixture that is especially valuable because it gives no ground to the suggestion that cultural fusion involves betrayal, loss, corruption, or dilution. The startling portrait of procreation — cultural formation and transformation — is constructed so that the integrity of both its tributaries remains uncompromised by their confluence.” Do you agree with his interpretation of part IV?
  5. What does baby Madhu symbolize?

Afro-Asia Archives

  1. How do you define ‘zine’?
  2. In what forms to do we find archives of revolutions?
  3. Which document from the Black Panther Party archive was most interesting to you?
  4. What other power couples, especially non-heteronormative ones, can we imagine from the genealogy in Zifeng Liu’s power point presentation?
  5. How do you define true allyship?