Hemingway's Dialectic with American Whiteness: Oak Park, Edward Said, and the Location of Authority

Hemingway's civic education in Oak Park taught him particular ways to perform whiteness. Oak Park civic leaders addressed racism as a problem that could be solved by well-meaning whites, effectively reserving the highest levels of leadership for whites. In his earliest stories, Hemingway exposes this racism tethered to progressivism by interrogating whiteness. Close textual analysis shaped by the theories of Edward Said and Toni Morrison reveal Hemingway's high school and Kansas City Star stories re-present the lens of white privilege as limiting and dangerous and explore Hemingway's first dialectic between individuality and hegemony.