Cultural Study of Maroon Novels by Black Women. Randi Gray Kristensen Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 2000 Rights of Passage: a Cross -Cultural Study of Maroon Novels by Black Women. Randi Gray Kristensen Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Kristensen, Randi Gray, "Rights of Passage: a Cross -Cultural Study of Maroon Novels by Black Women." (2000). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 7205. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/7205 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS * This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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Higher quality 6" x 9’ black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. RIGHTS OF PASSAGE: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF MAROON NOVELS BY BLACK WOMEN A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Randi Gray Kristensen B.A. Georgetown University, 1982 M.F.A. Louisiana State University, 1993 May 2000 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number 9979269 Copyright 2000 by Kristensen, Randi Gray All rights reserved. ___ __ ® UMI UMI Microform9979269 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ©Copyright 2 OCX) Randi Gray Kristensen All rights reserved ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, give thanks for the guidance of unseen forces, usually benevolent, and remarkably generous in their teachings over the course of this project. Ashe! Second, this project is dedicated to the memory of Sylvia Adina Gray. link between present and past, whose Maroon determination she passed on to her daughter, my mother, Dorothy Gray Kristensen, to whom this project is also wholeheartedly and respectfully dedicated. Ashe! Third, this project would have faded into oblivion without the sustaining support of the SisterMentor Dissertation Support Group (formerly the Sisterspace and Books Dissertation Support Group for Women of Color) in Washington, D.C., founded by Dr. Shireen K. Lewis. May we keep the faith and stay the course. Ashe! Fourth, the patience and crucial interventions of Dr. Patrick McGee were essential to the completion of a work whose pulse occasionally grew faint and difficult to hear. Ashe! Fifth, the financial support of the St. Lawrence University Minority Dissertation Fellowship arrived at a critical time. Ashe! Sixth, the friends who, whether they believed or not, supported in every way: Karen Jacob-Cortright, Mary Jane Smith, Janice Crosby, Cynthia Newcomer, Gisele Mills, Helene Lorenz, Ramsey Makhuli, Margarita Alario, Lailah Farah Mohtar, Danielle Edwards, Bert and Marie-Paule Dalbec, and Celia Nyamweru. Ashe! Seventh, the early members of the committee who moved on: Dana Nelson, Reggie Young, and Leslie Bary. Ashe! iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Eighth, the final members of the committee who were willing to adopt this project: Richard Moreland, John Lowe, and Carolyn Jones. Ashe! Ninth, Maroons throughout the Diaspora who are translating the principles of marronage into active resistance, and my father, Bent Jacob Kristensen, whose alliance with the Moore Town Maroons demonstrates the wonder of the unlikely. Ashe! Last, and first, the gifted talents who wrote the novels and kept alive the spirit expressed herein, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, and Maryse Conde. Ashe! iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT...........................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................1 2 BELOVED MAROONS: RECOVERING SELF AND COMMUNITY............................................................................................46 3 MAROONED ON BOURNE ISLAND: THE ALCHEMY OF RITUAL................................................................ 100 4 HEREMAKHONON: THE UNFINISHED JOURNEY ........................196 5 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................232 WORKS CITED................................................................................................................. 239 VITA....................................................................................................................................248 V Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This study investigates the use and implications of the trope of marronage, the African-American practice of self-emancipation to forge alternative New World communities, in selected novels by Black women writers of North America and the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. It draws on theories of liminality to posit a theory of liberatory practice that deconstructs hegemonic narratives, both personal and historical. Postmodern approaches are deferred in favor of locating these texts and their concerns as deriving from the epistemological consequences of modernity. Cross- cultural Black women’s texts were chosen to illuminate the recognition of shared subjugations across national and linguistic borders, as well as comparable resistant strategies. The reclamation of the submerged history of marronage across these cultural borders offers the possibility for re-centering the African Diasporic subject in the Americas, enabling the subject and her community’s participation in resistance and the creation of alternative American ontologies. Close readings of Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Chosen Place. The Timeless People by Paule Marshall, and Heremakhonon by Maryse Conde demonstrate the transition of marronage from historical and geographical territorial identity to submerged but reclaimable psychological rite of passage. The study concludes that reading African Diasporic fictions through the lens of marronage enables the cultural work of identity and community-building, critique, and affirmation. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Revolution begins with the self, in the self. The individual, the basic revolutionary unit, must be purged o f poison and lies that assault the ego and threaten the heart, that hazard the next larger unit — the couple or pair, that jeopardizes the still larger unit -- the family or cell, that put the entire movement in peril. (Bambara 109) This study investigates the manner in which three novels by Black women writers in the Americas describe what Patricia Hill Collins has called “the journey from internalized oppression to the ‘free mind' o f a self-defined Afrocentric feminist consciousness” (104). The novels are Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People, and Maryse Conde’s Heremakhonon. This study is intended to rearticulate the contours of each novel’s primary female character’s quest for agency by drawing on cultural theory