Author Description

WHAT IF JAY GATSBY IS A BLACK MAN PASSING AS A WHITE ONE? "Jay Gatsby: A Black Man in Whiteface" expounds upon the thesis that Jay Gatsby, the much beloved hero of "The Great Gatsby", is a man of mixed black and white parentage who pretends and appears to be a white man. Through a close read of the text, a review of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and letters, and a discussion of the racially charged climate of America's Jazz Age, the "Black Gatsby" theory shows how America's troubled conscience about race laces through the novel and that Fitzgerald wrote from his conflicting racial beliefs and his insider/outsider status to support the novel's central theme: the doomed pursuit of the American Dream. Fitzgerald himself said that even the most complimentary contemporary reviewers failed to understand what the novel was about. It is often referred to as a novel where much is said by implication and ellipsis which must be weighed and measured to appreciate its artistic grandeur. "Jay Gatsby: A Black Man in Whiteface" does the weighing and measuring to see what we may have missed in a direct and fun prose style with easily accessible supporting annotation and bibliography so you can follow along.