What is the author's style in Flyin' West by Pearl Cleage?

Irony refers to a difference between what appears to be true and what is actually true. It is a complex literary technique that requires contrasts and opposing forces or perceptions. That Cleage uses Frank, a mulatto, as a tool of irony, is therefore appropriate. Despite his cool demeanor, he is deeply conflicted about his mixed parentage. He chooses to believe the romantic notion that his white father and his black mother were genuinely in love and that his father wanted to marry his mother. In reality, his father would not give his mother her freedom. Frank needs to believe that he was the result of a loving and dignified union, when the truth is that he was the product of an imbalance of power and, in all likelihood, of violence. The irony is extended when he recreates the same dynamic with his own wife. He asserts his control over her and dominates her with physical and emotional abuse. The marriage is characterized by an imbalance of power, and he does not recognize that he is recreating the truth of the past.