ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how in Mulatto (1935) Langston Hughes rewrites the American family drama as fundamentally interracial and amalgamated. The play draws out the degree to which interracial intimacy—hegemonically imposed and emotionally embedded—is inextricably threaded throughout the US family and, hence, the nation. The character Bert may seem to be the titular mulatto of the play, but this chapter focuses instead on his mother, Cora. Hughes’ characterization of Cora resists the stereotypical “mammification” of the Black mother and thus pushes against the assumptions of the nineteenth-century “tragic mulatto” melodramas and early twentieth-century anti-lynching plays.
