Greg Riggio

Fighting Dismemberment: Moonlight as Protest Literature

In “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” James Baldwin declared that neither Native Son nor Uncle Tom’s Cabin should be defined as protest literature. Baldwin’s essay is skeptical of both works because he doubts either’s ability to engender social change for black Americans. Linking both works, Baldwin argues that Bigger of Native Son is Tom’s descendant. As a result, the “contemporary Negro novelist and the dead New England woman are locked together in a deadly, timeless battle”. In this battle, both characters reject their own humanity by accepting a white theology that denies them embodiment as black, human men. When read in 2019, Baldwin’s essay should prompt readers to consider how protest literature has changed since Native Son. Although Baldwin does not offer any examples of protest literature, thus suggesting skepticism any such works could exist, readers of Baldwin’s essay today are likely to ask whether anything might fulfill his rigorous criteria. “Fighting Dismemberment: Moonlight as Protest Literature” examines this question against the 2016 film Moonlight by Barry Jenkins. Like the novels Baldwin examines, Moonlight’s impact on popular culture also makes it both recognized and representative of black America. Whether wrongly or rightly, this recognition encourages readers to consider whether it reinforces or combats the same negative qualities “Everybody’s Protest Novel” emphasizes. By reading the film’s development of Chiron’s body and blackness using the theory of Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin/White Masks”, this essay argues Moonlight does meet Baldwin’s criteria for protest literature. Through an intersectional approach, this essay analyzes the way Moonlight portrays blackness, gender, and sexuality to portray its main character Chiron as both having and controlling his physical body, thus empowering him as a black, human man.

Greg Riggio is an MA Candidate at Montclair State University.