Celebrating black American women's lives: An analysis of Alice Walker's selected texts.
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Date
2013
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
NUST, Department of Communication
Abstract
From the American Revolution to the present, African American female writers have not
only articulated the physical horrors of the female slave, but have also celebrated the
black American women’s lives through their works. For Walker, African American women
have suffered a triple oppression of gender, race and class. Thus, using the selected
texts, this paper will show Walker’s preoccupation with the black American woman,
especially the way she is marginalised and subjugated by both the colonial and slave
system and her black male counterpart. As an African-American woman, Walker also
celebrates the lives of the American black women by giving a voice to the oppressed
and voiceless. In her narratives, she criticises both racist and sexist hegemony. This
article will show how the women in the selected texts have played a myriad of roles in
their search for self-definition and spiritual redemption. In The colour purple, The third
life of Grange Copeland, and also in Walker’s essays, In search of our mother’s gardens, she argues that the black women have been notable for standing against oppression and have made significant contributions in the making of the American nation. Hence, this article intends to show that despite being oppressed, African-American women have never succumbed to victimhood. It seeks to examine how Alice Walker celebrates the black-American women’s search for identity and fulfilment through a harmonious coexistence with their men-folk. The article will conclude that Walker transcends binary oppositions to explore the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties and triumphs of black women’. Through self-expression, her women characters undergo some form of transformation and hence celebrate a sense of wholeness embedded in a viable past.
Description
Keywords
African feminism, Oppression of women, Female subjugation, Subjugation of women, Gender issues
Citation
Pasi, J. S. (2013). Celebrating black American women's lives: An analysis of Alice Walker's selected texts. NAWA Journal of Language and Communication, 7(1), 29-44.