"Deviant India: When Norman Mailer Stabbed Adele Morales"

• In Event: Deviant Immigrant Legacies: Tactics against Fear

Abstract

Founder of New Journalism and Pulitzer Prize awardee (1968), Norman Mailer was portrayed as a provocateur and an anti-war critic against the US’ bellicose empresses of the mid-twentieth century. Nonetheless, he was ultimately a believer in masculinity and its connection to American identity. In her memoir, The Last Party. Scenes from my life with Norman Mailer (1997), painter Adele Morales writes about her first interactions with the bohemian writers of the Lower East Side including Mailer. Morales recounts a conversation with Jack Kerouac, where she defined herself: “‘I’m half Spanish. Peruvian Indian on my father’s side,’” to which Kerouac replied: “Now I see the Indian. It’s there in the slant and the sadness of your eyes’” (20). Morales was a working class “anchor baby,” pursuing a career as an artist with more passion than resources. She had a turbulent relationship with Mailer often fueled by alcohol and drugs. In 1960, Mailer stabbed her with a penknife and only received a probation sentence. Biographers and literary critics present the episode in passing, without a single mention of feminicide. This presentation analyzes Morales’ writings illuminating the moments of racialized violence, her stereotypification as a sexy Latina, femme fatale, and “Black Dahlia,” at that time a euphemism for prostitue. Not strictly an immigrant, Morales nonetheless lived through her parents’ immigration and the harsh catholic prejudices against women’s deviancy. Only after thirty seven years, Morales was capable of revisiting these episodes, representing herself as a woman who enjoyed art, partying, and sexual experimentation before the sexual revolution of the late sixties. By unearthing Morales’ case, this paper elaborates on the insidiousness of violence against racialized women in the US, as it is deeply entangled with imperialist domination and fears of an individual/collective castration of whiteness.

Author

• Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa, Indiana University