Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in English
First Advisor
Jay Watson
Second Advisor
Leigh Anne Duck
Third Advisor
Adetayo Alabi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Emmett Till remains a prominent figure in African American literature and culture. Police and vigilante violence in the twenty-first century against Black American men, women, and children has provoked political and artistic comparisons between contemporary instances of anti-Black violence and the event of Till’s kidnapping and murder. This thesis recognizes these comparisons and argues for a reorientation of critical and popular attention within the ongoing project of commemorating Till through the genres of memoir, poetry, and fiction. With the publication of Mamie Till-Mobley’s memoir Death of Innocence in 2003, I argue that this text establishes a memorial baseline for the importance of understanding Till’s life as a child and adolescent. The poet January Gill O’Neil’s 2024 poetry collection Glitter Road builds off of this understanding but shifts our attention to how Till is remembered through public memorials in Mississippi, as well as how these memorials are challenged by retaliation and vandalism. The novelist Percival Everett’s 2021 book The Trees directly engages with the historical and cultural narratives of Till’s murder but shifts readers’ attention once more toward the long history of anti-Black violence in the United States and broadens this commemorative project to include the names of people who have not received the same degree of memorial attention. The work of O’Neil and Everett both harness the historical facts of Till’s case while also inflecting these facts and circumstances with creative liberties, demonstrating what the scholar Harriet Pollack identifies as literary “shape-shifting” across fictional and nonfictional narrative genres. Together each of these writers affirms the mourning call put forth by Mamie Till-Mobley to “let the world see” what had been done to her son, and to never cease in memorializing Till and other victims of anti-Black violence. I argue that memorial literature in the twenty-first century serves the enduring cultural significance of remembering Emmett Till, the tragedy of his death, but also the richness of his life.
Recommended Citation
Browning, Chase Almquist, "Shape-Shifting in Literary Commemorations to Emmett Till" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2794.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2794