The Narrative Creation of Self in the Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Writers
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1990 The aN rrative Creation of Self in the Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Writers. Jerome P. De romanet Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation De romanet, Jerome P., "The aN rrative Creation of Self in the Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Writers." (1990). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4978. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4978 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]. 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Order Number 9112225 The narrative creation of self in the fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean women writers de Romanet, Jerome P., Ph.D. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col., 1990 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE NARRATIVE CREATION OF SELF IN THE FICTION BY AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND AFRICAN-CARIBBEAN WOMEN WRITERS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Jdrome de Romanet Maitrise, University de la Sorbonne, Paris, 1976 D.E.A., University de la Sorbonne, Paris, 1982 August 1990 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Introduction Chapter I: Writing The Self, Narrating Blackness, Voicing Womanhood -A: Narrative and Self -B: Writing The Self -C: Narrating Black Selves -D: Black Women’s "Margin of Existence" and Coming Into Voice -E: Narrative and Spatial Confinement in Black Women’s Texts Chapter II: Place and Displacement in Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Authors -A: The Impossibilities of Place: Existential Displacement in African-American and African-Caribbean Texts -B: Establishing Place -1) Place as An Obsession -2) Place as A Persona -C: Place as A Negative Limitation of Self -1) Place as A Threatening Environment -2) Place as Confinement and Oppression -D: The Chosen Place(s): Place as A Locale of Rebirth Chapter m : Time as Re-Appropriated Continuum in Black Literatures from The New World -A: Time as A Cyclical Continuum: The African Origins of Black Time in The Americas -B: The American Experience: Slavery as Fragmentation and Re-Appropriation of Time -C: Official History versus A History of One’s Own: Myth and Ritual in Black Societies from The Diaspora -D: Myth as A Stay Against Time’s Acceleration -E: Sacrificial Order and Controlled Disorder Chapter IV: The Construction of Black Female Selves and Identities -A: A Multiplicity of Female Paradigms -B: The Distortion of Self: Reification and Self-Hatred -C: Male and Female Interaction in Black Communities from The Americas -D: The Affirmation of Self and The Community of Female Affiliation -E: A Multiplicity of Mothers: Figures of Mothering and Maternal Roles -F: ’Unchilded’ Black Women: Strategies and Refusal of Mothering -G: Same-Sex Identification and Bonding: Homosexuality and Homophobia Chapter V: Tropes of Empowerment in Audrg Lorde’s and Maya Angelou's Autobiographies -A: Exclusion as A Trope of Difference in Lorde’s and Angelou’s Autobiographies -B: The Re-Appropriation of One’s History in Angelou’s AH God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. -C: The Mythical Re-Creation of Self and The Invention of A Woman-Identified Past in Zami ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. -D: The Creation of A Place of Lesbian Consciousness and Community in Zami -E: Speaking One’s Truth(s): Silence and The Discontinuities of Autobiographical Individuation in Lorde and Angelou -F: Speaking The Erotic -G: Speaking Oneself Out of Silence and Invisibility/Naming The Nameless Conclusion: From The Singular to The Communal: Voice and Narrative Strategies in The Fiction by Black Women from The Diaspora -A The Conditions for A Black Female Language: Aesthetic Models and Lineage -B The Impossibilities and Obfuscations of A Black Female Language -C Speaking In Voices Triumphant: Merging Individual and Communal Voices Works Cited Vita iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT The Narrative Creation of Self in The Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Writers. This study entails an examination of the works of six authors (Maya Angelou, Audrd Lorde, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor and Simone Schwarz-Bart) whose works are shaped by values and perceptions influenced by their experiences of sexual, racial and social marginalization. While I acknowledge differences in origin, beliefs and personality, I explore the common ground which unites them, and more specifically the complex ties that bind their individual "writing I" with their environment-"communitas," to use Victor Turner’s term. This study is also an exploration of the modes in which these six writers create their idiosyncratic selves out of the continued tension between the writer's "I" and the "communitas" to which she claims to belong. Furthermore, while addressing the links that connect these authors' works with larger literary categories (i.e. the novel, autobiography, African-American and Caribbean literary traditions, literature written by women), I distinguish what is specific to each of these narratives in their affirmation of distinct black female selves. In my first chapter, I investigate the social and historical strictures that have governed the development of both specific black narrative traditions in the New World and of the so-called "black female literary tradition" since the publication of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Following my initial discussion of the trope of confinement in works by black women, in my second and third chapters I explore the diverse representations of place and time within black cultures from Africa and the diaspora. In chapter IV, I discuss the particular constraints that determine the construction of specifically female identities in the texts by these six authors. This discussion takes into account: the role of female-male relationships, the retention of strong African-centered traits concerning maternal roles and mothering; and the crucial part played in most of these texts by same- sex bonding and identification. In the fifth chapter, I study more closely two autobiographies (Lorde’s and Angelou’s) and show how they partake of the self-genesis of black women’s selves in America iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and the Caribbean. Finally, to avoid the essentialist fallacy, my conclusion is open-ended; I demonstrate how these six authors’ narrative techniques and uses of voices re-affirm the constant need to merge the individual and the communal voices in an ultimate celebration of identity and continued survival against all odds. Throughout this study, my intention is to show that each author’s