‘Black Skin, White Masks’: Treatment of Slavery in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World

Abstract

This research based on Edward P. Jones’s fiction The Known World is an effort to underscore the complexities inherent in African American society: Jones portrays the humiliating condition of slaves at the hand of freed slaves after emancipation in America. The freed slaves continued the legacy of keeping slaves though their former masters-the whites-had all in all given up this malpractice. The freed slaves inherited this tradition as if it was the African culture. The first chapter introduces the history of African American literature along with its implication and consequences in Jones’s novel. The second chapter brings out the instances of humiliation of slaves in The Known World vis-à-vis the critical insights in African American criticism as expressed in the scholarly writings of renowned critics in the discipline. The research concludes to prove the hypothesis that Jones’s novel differs from other African American novels in that it illumines the tension between African American communities in the process of emancipation.