Out-of-the-Way Closets: "Kabnis," Race, and Closet Drama

Scholars of the Harlem Renaissance have long struggled with the generic status of Jean Toomer's "Kabnis." Is it a failed play or a wildly successful work of experimental prose? This generic divide has tended, in turn, to map onto conflicting readings of Toomer's affirmation or negation of his racial identity. This article draws on Toomer's and Waldo Frank's rich and unexplored production notes for "Kabnis" to reorient these oppositions. I argue that "Kabnis" stages a formal critique of its own generic and racial indeterminacies. By reading for scenes of closeted performance within "Kabnis," I show how "Kabnis" constructs a series of metadiscourses about genre that defy critics' interpretations of both closet drama and black identity.