Dismantling the Master’s Schoolhouse: The Rhetoric of Education in African American Autobiography and Fiction

This thesis examines rhetorical understandings of education for African Americans in literature of three important time periods of American history. From the post-Reconstruction South, to Northern cities in the 1950s, and finally to 1990s Los Angeles, this is an examination of how African American authors of fiction and autobiography have presented the relationship between literacy acquisition and identity. Underlying the historical and rhetorical examination is the argument that, for African American students, the virtue of the educational space is dubious. It is at once the gateway to the "American dream" of prosperity, and the venue for the reinforcement of systemic racial prejudice and oppression. This thesis interrogates the cultural belief that literacy is the key to freedom by illustrating ways in which authors complicate the definitions of both literacy and freedom.