Abstract
In his 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Frederick Jackson Turner recognized that with its closing, “the frontier” as signifier of geographical space was cut adrift.1 Other conceptual and spatial divides along ethnic and racial lines had emerged almost simultaneously with the Western frontier, however, and were available to absorb and transform its conceptual significance. The most obvious was that between European and African Americans embodied in the codes, economy, and practices of slavery and subsequent segregation. Such lines of segregation became particularly sharp in urban settings. It is this urban manifestation of frontier ideology, and particularly the textual space opened up by crime fiction for an articulation of that frontier from its “other” side, that will concern me here.
They draw a line and say for you to stay on your side of the line. They don’t care if there’s no bread over on your side. They don’t care if you die. And … when you try to come from behind your line they kill you.
—(Wright 407)
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© 2009 Reginald Dyck and Cheli Reutter
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Crooks, R. (2009). From the Far Side of the Urban Frontier: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes and Walter Mosley. In: Dyck, R., Reutter, C. (eds) Crisscrossing Borders in Literature of the American West. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230619548_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230619548_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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