Speaking in Typeface: Characterizing Stereotypes in Gayl Jones's Mosquito

Abstract

At what point do identity tropes turn into their negative counterpartÑstereotypes? How much identity is too much? These are the questions at the heart of Gayl Jones's most recent novel Mosquito, which explores the line between racial characterization and racial stereotyping, specifically in terms of African-American configurations of latinidad. Jones blurs the boundaries between orality and literacy, stereotypes and (round) characters by producing a novel that is a form of textual verbalization, where literate habits of reading are challenged through oral modalities of (flat) characterization and storytelling.

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