Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor by Elizabeth Young

This book proposes that in American culture, the figure of Frankenstein has at times been imagined as black as a method of antiracist critique of culture. The book starts with nineteenth century images of Frankenstein. Although at times racists have used the figure, Young argues that it's far more useful for an anti-racist reading because of the human sympathy with which the monster is portrayed in Shelley's tale and in other versions of the story. The next two chapters focus on The Monster, by Stephen Crane, in which Young proposes that Crane retells the Frankenstein story to both make a political commentary (which gives the story a tragic ending) and an aesthetic commentary (which gives the story a successful ending), and Sport of the Gods, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, in which Young investigates the role of irony and parody in Dunbar's reworking of the Frankenstein story. The last chapter deals with 20th century film and popular culture figures of Frankenstein, and how the Frankenstein figure relates to masculinity. I thought Young gave really good close readings, and I think that this book is a good example of transatlantic scholarship, but I felt that it was a little uneven as far as the time periods went--that is to say, I thought her argument hung together better in the 19th century as an unit, and in the 20th century as an unit, than it did in the book as a complete whole.