“Drink Up, You Mothers”: Race and Invisibility in a DeLillo Radio Play

This article shows that Don DeLillo’s largely unknown short radio play of 1966, Mother , deploys the invisibility of actors’ bodies inherent to its medium to offer a disturbing examination of the work done by fantasy, role-playing, and “blackvoice” in US race relations and civil rights discourse of the era. Drawing connections to Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, the popular radio drama Amos ’n’ Andy , and US Supreme Court decisions, this article not only makes the first-ever critical argument about Mother but demonstrates how it illuminates whiteness and Blackness in DeLillo’s first three novels, Americana , End Zone , and Great Jones Street .