Solving the ‘Mystery’ of Blackness through African American Detective Fiction: Pauline Hopkins’ and Rudolph Fisher’s Intervention in a White Tradition

Abstract

This project investigates two early works of African American detective fiction, Pauline Hopkins’ Hagar’s Daughter and Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure-Man Dies, and the ways in which these writers intervene in a white-dominated tradition to expose constructions of race. As these writers work from and modify models of detective fiction, to use Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s term, they “signify” upon detective tropes to establish African American subjectivity and promote racial equality. Chapter 1 examines Fisher’s appropriation and disruption of the Holmesian tradition, particularly through his use of multiple detectives (5), a liminal character in N’gana Frimbo, masking, and doubling to question racial categorization and Western systems of knowledge. Chapter 2 discusses Hopkins’ text as a place of resistance for African American women, as well as its deviation from a mystery tradition that is strikingly similar to Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson. Hopkins employs doubling, “passing” characters, and a complex narrative to illuminate constructions of both race and gender. This project demonstrates Hopkins’ and Fisher’s texts ultimately challenge Western pre-conceptions of African Americans that historically relegate them to positions of inferiority, exposing systems of injustice, while simultaneously creating space for African American subjectivity.