Black Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative: Femininity Unfettered

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Bloomsbury Academic, Mar 30, 1999 - Literary Criticism - 200 pages

The neo-slave narrative is an important development in American literary history and has serious revisionist intentions at its foundation. This book examines how contemporary African American women writers have shaped the genre. These authors have written neo-slave narratives to reinscribe history from the perspective of the African American woman, most specifically the nineteenth century enslaved mother. The writers considered in this study—Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, J. California Cooper, Gayl Jones, and Octavia Butler—explore American slavery through the lens of gender, both to interrogate the myth that enslaved women, denied the privilege of having a gender identity by the institution of slavery, were in fact genderless, and to celebrate the acts of resistance which enabled enslaved women to mother in the fullest sense of the term.

The volume begins with an overview of historical representations of slavery in America, from the slave narrative itself to the revisionist scholarship of the 1960s. The book then examines several individual neo-slave narratives, such as Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966), Williams' Dessa Rose (1986), Morrison's Beloved (1987), Cooper's Family (1991), Jones' Corregidora (1975), and Butler's Kindred (1979). What the women in these novels have in common is the fact that they mother; what the writers have in common is a tendency to utilize subversive strategies such as reversal, blurring, and the creation of myth to dramatize gender identity and to highlight the varied nature of motherhood as enslaved women experienced it. The final chapter evaluates the influence of the neo-slave narrative on American literature in general and on popular perceptions and misperceptions of African American women.

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Contents

Race Gender and Power
29
The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrisons
57
Such a thing
83
Copyright

2 other sections not shown

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Black Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative: Femininity Unfettered
Elizabeth A. Beaulieu
No preview available - 1999

Common terms and phrases

African American African American literature Alice American literature antebellum argues awareness baby becomes birth black family black women writers chapter character child Clora contemporary black women Cooper Corregidora Culture Dana Dana's Davis death Dessa Rose Dessa's Doak Butler enslaved female enslaved mother enslaved persons enslaved women fact Fammy feels Feminist fiction Frederick Douglass freedom Gayl Jones gender gender-blurring genre Haley's Harriet Jacobs human identity Jubilee Kaine land legacy literary lives looked male Margaret Margaret Walker master Maternal Bonds Morrison motherhood Mutt myth narrative voice narrator Nehemiah neo-slave narratives never nineteenth-century novel nurturing Octavia Butler past Patricia Hill Collins Paul D perhaps plantation Press protagonist reader recognizes relationship repositioning reversal role Rose Rufus Ruth Ruth's Sethe Sethe's sexual share Sherley Anne Williams singing slave narrative slavery story Sweet Home tells Toni Morrison's Beloved tradition twentieth-century Ursa Ursa's Vyry Vyry's Walker Weylin York

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About the author (1999)

ELIZABETH ANN BEAULIEU is a Lecturer at Appalachian State University, where she teaches African American Literature.

Bibliographic information

TitleBlack Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative: Femininity Unfettered
Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies: Contemporary Black Poets
AuthorElizabeth A. Beaulieu
PublisherBloomsbury Academic, 1999
Original fromthe University of Michigan
DigitizedFeb 29, 2008
ISBN0313308381, 9780313308383
Length200 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Literary Criticism / American / General
Literary Criticism / General
  
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