‘I Have Been Faithful to Thee, Cynara’: Parodying Canonical Pro-Slavery Novel in The Wind Done Gone

Abstract

Parody, as a specific case of adaptation and intertextuality, is not only burlesquing background text but also creating a critical distance through superimposition strategies. This paper sought to show the parodic means performed in the novel The Wind Done Gone (TWDG) written by Alice Randall. It was meant to be a parody of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind (GWTW) and has intertextuality with other literary works. The interconnection of the novel's narrative strategies and its effort to attach historical reassessment suggested a trustworthy reality of the black slave experience. Randall effectively deconstructed and reconstructed the black experience and identity, as well as dismantled the racist representation in the canonical novel GWTW. Enslaved black people are transformed into dominants as active agents and intelligent, creating a beautiful mulatto, tagging black intellectuals in American history and the new Negroes, naming ties, and providing verbatim quotes to revisit the stereotype and cultural misconstruction against black Americans. Randall seemed not to alter the meta-history of slavery but rather to show the irony of the racist discourse in the canonical saga and other popular media.