Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America.

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Introduction: surprising metamorphoses -- Becoming colored in Occom and Wheatley's early America -- To make Samson Occom "so" -- "To make a poet black" -- The political bodies of Benjamin Franklin and Hendrick Aupaumut -- You are what you eat; or, Franklin's practice makes (almost) perfect -- Hendrick Aupaumut's own color -- Transforming into natives: Crèvecoeur, Marrant, and Brown on becoming Indian -- Passing as, transforming into Crèvecoeur's American race -- John Marrant becoming Cherokee -- Edgar Huntly's unsettling transformation -- Doubting transformable race: -- Equiano, Brackenridge, and the textuality of natural history -- To quote and to question: Olaudah Equiano's provocative ends -- Brackenridge and the limits of writing natural history -- Epilogue: interiorizing racial metamorphosis: -- The Algerine captive's language of sympathy.

Racial thought at the close of the 18th century differed radically from that of the 19th century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change. While historians have documented aspects of 18th century racial thought, this is the first book to identify how this thinking informs the figurative language in the literature of this crucial period.

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