Oreo (22 page)

Oreo’s cynical manipulation of stereotypes underscores Ross’s increasingly biting satire as
the heroine enters the Schwartz household, not as a long-lost daughter, but as a trickster
in the guise of a servant. At one point a friend of her father’s even mistakes her for one
of Samuel’s “harlots of Harlem” (182-184). The extent to which identity, kinship, and
heritage are constructed around race, culture, and economics may be the ultimate lesson of
Oreo’s quest, as Ross questions the “natural” bond presumed to exist between parent and
child. Finally, in the sections titled “The story of Helen and Samuel, Oreo’s version” and
“Clues, shmues,” Oreo comes to her own conclusions about her origins, ultimately relying on
her powers of interpretation to piece together and understand her family’s history of
strained relationships. Oreo imagines this story as a film treatment for a Hollywood biopic,
a scenario complete with a requisite “
Montage of
Variety
headlines of the (‘O’s
Pop Top Flop’ genre
” (205). In the process, Ross describes her method of composing
this novel. The myth of Theseus (also a search for paternal origin) generates a list of
episodes, characters, and clues, which the novelist strings together in the labyrinthine
twists and turns of her own parodic plot.

Is
Oreo
a black text? Ross was surely aware that, while Norman Mailer’s
jazz-influenced “White Negro” saw himself as the essence of hip sensibility, secular “black
Jews” or any other African Americans who identify themselves intellectually as “people of
the book” might be branded as oreos, when literary culture is associated with a “white”
heritage. One of the novel’s comic epigraphs quotes the most commonly repeated definition of
“oreo”: “Someone who,” like the cookie, “is black on the outside and white on the inside.”
However, her protagonist is not a culturally whitewashed, deracinated, or “wannabe white”
character who has assimilated European-American cultural styles in order to escape the
supposed inferiority of African American culture, or to make herself more acceptable to the
mainstream. Oreo claims no cookie-cutter identity; rather, she is a character whose cultural
hybridity has given her an intimate view of two of the diverse subcultures that have made
significant contributions to the production of American culture. Along with her biracial and
bicultural identity, Oreo maintains an abiding interest in the mechanics of identity
construction and cultural reproduction. Through Oreo’s adventures, Ross depicts a complex
negotiation of identity within a racial, ethnic, sociocultural, and linguistic heterogeneity
that extends beyond black and white. While Oreo is visually identifiable and self-identified
as African American, the content of her identity is formed dynamically, improvisationally,
and contingently as she interacts with others, choosing from a diverse menu of sometimes
competing possibilities and influences that vary from one encounter to another.

In Oreo’s interactions with members of both sides of her family, as well as with neighbors,
friends, acquaintances, and strangers, Ross’s novel suggests that acculturation is not a
one-way street, but is more like a subway system with graffiti-tagged cars that travel
uptown as well as downtown, or even more like an interconnected network of multi-lane
freeways. Particularly in racially diverse and integrated settings, immigrants of various
races and national origins, on their way to becoming American, may emulate the cultural
styles of black Americans, since African Americans, though a minority, are as much the
founders of American culture as Anglo Americans. Anglos themselves are a minority of white
Americans. Oreo’s biracial and bicultural heritage is not so exceptional when one considers
that most native-born Americans, regardless of skin color, are products of racial hybridity, just as American culture and language are products of cultural and linguistic
hybridity. The significant contribution of black Americans to the national culture includes
the problem and challenge that linguistic and cultural difference offer to American
democracy, and to the creative production of African-American writers.

Entering the maze of Ross’s imaginatively constructed novel, the reader is reminded that a
labyrinth is “an intricate structure of interconnecting passages,” much like the text of
Oreo
; and also that “labyrinth” is the name given to the internal architecture of
the ear, the destination of the spoken word. In this unfortunately overlooked work, Fran
Ross lends the reader a remarkable eye for the baffling absurdity of everyday life and a
receptive ear for the noisy diversity of the American idiom.
Oreo
is a text that
assumes the verbal intelligence, the linguistic and cultural competence of readers who
appreciate the rich diversity that contributes to the complexity of their own
identities.

HARRYETTE MULLEN

Biographical information was gathered from Gerald Richard Ross,
Gerald Ross, III, Ann Grifalconi, and the Temple University Alumni Association. I
gratefully acknowledge all these sources, and I especially appreciate the cooperation of
the Ross family, who generously shared their memories and personal documents with
me.

Works Cited

Brown, Rita Mae.
Rubyfruit Jungle
. New York: Bantam Books, 1973.

Ingram, Billy. “The Richard Pryor Show.” http//www.tvparty.com/pryor.html.

Jong, Erica.
Fear of Flying
. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1973.

Joyce, James.
Ulysses
. London: Secker and Warburg, 1994 (1922).

Kelley, William Melvin.
Dunsfords Travels Everywheres
. Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970.

Mailer, Norman.
The White Negro
. San Francisco: City Lights Press,
1957.

Mullen, Harryette. “One Smart, Tough Cookie: The Lit, Grit, and
Motherwit of Fran Ross’s
Oreo
’ (forthcoming article).

Ross, Fran. “Richard Pryor, Richard Pryor.”
Essence
. April 1979: 70ff.

Wilson, Harriet.
Our Nig
. New York: Random House, 1983.

Copyright © 1974 by Frances D. Ross

Originally published in 1974 by Greyfalcon House, Inc.

Reprinted in 2015 by New Directions, by arrangement with Ann Grifalconi, Greyfalcon
House

Foreword copyright © 2015 by Danzy Senna

Afterword copyright © 2000 by Harryette Mullen

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio,
television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published as a New Directions Paperbook in 2015

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by F. D. R.

eISBN 978-0-8112-2323-2

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