The Anxiety of Vision in the Colored American Magazine and Of One Blood

Abstract

To read Pauline Hopkins’ novel Of One Blood in the context of its original location within the pages of the Colored American Magazine makes the concept of vision and visual representation appear in a whole new light. The novel’s exploration of visuality reverberates in interesting ways with the rich visual environment of the magazine that believed in the virtue of asserting the visual presence African Americans. Such a heavy investment in the optics of racial identity speaks to Hopkins’ novel in a number of ways. Of One Blood elaborates on the phenomenon of passing as well as several supernatural visual scenarios that speak back to the magazine’s broader understanding of visual representation. The marked ambivalence with regard to visual self-presentation and perspectival looking in Hopkins’ novel cast a shadow over both the idea of the visual image and the politics of looking.