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Distribution Agreement in Presenting This Thesis Or Dissertation As A Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: _____________________________ ______________ Kim D. Green Date “To Be Black and „At Home‟”: Movement, Freedom, and Belonging in African American and African Canadian Literatures By Kim D. Green Doctor of Philosophy English _________________________________________ Frances S. Foster Advisor _________________________________________ Lawrence P. Jackson Committee Member _________________________________________ Kimberly Wallace-Sanders Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ___________________ Date “To Be Black and „At Home‟”: Movement, Freedom, and Belonging in African American and African Canadian Literatures By Kim D. Green B.A., Claflin University, 2004 Advisor: Frances Smith Foster, Ph.D. An abstract of a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English 2010 Abstract “To Be Black and „At Home‟”: Movement, Freedom, and Belonging in African American and African Canadian Literatures By Kim D. Green “„To Be Black and „At Home‟” augments a relatively understudied area of African diasporic scholarship, comparative examination of African American and African Canadian literatures. I argue that African American and African Canadian novelists including Ann Petry and Austin Clarke provide nuanced representations of the experiences of people who persistently encounter discrimination because of their belongings to marginalized racial, gender, and class groups and show how movements such as national and transnational migration, educational attainment, and economic advancement can represent acts of resistance to inequitable treatment. The selected literary works also demonstrate how these physical, intellectual, and economic movements are affirmations of blacks‟ right to access national ideals of freedom, equality, and justice in the United States and Canada. For example, the black female protagonists in Petry‟s The Street (1946) and Clarke‟s The Meeting Point (1967) exercise intellectual mobility to achieve their visions of economic prosperity, which are commensurate with ideals of freedom and equality that govern the nations in which they reside. As marginalized members of their national communities, they learn that they do not equally benefit from these ideals, but this lesson does not prevent them from gaining education and using other types of mobility to demand access to opportunities for economic success. Their employments of movement therefore become acts of resistance to discriminatory treatment and affirmations of their right to achieve ideals of freedom and equality in the nations they call home. Although I focus primarily on African American and African Canadian literatures, I assert that themes of belonging, movement, and freedom have the potential to unify diverse literatures and cultures throughout the African diaspora. Racism, for example, has specific manifestations in particular nations and cultures. However, people throughout the African diaspora grapple with the inhibiting consequences of belonging to marginalized racial groups. Therefore, I argue that literary works, historical analyses, and other diasporic texts provide important knowledge about ways in which particular belongings affect opportunities for freedom and various types of mobility in multiple national locations. “To Be Black and „At Home‟”: Movement, Freedom, and Belonging in African American and African Canadian Literatures By Kim D. Green B.A., Claflin University, 2004 Advisor: Frances Smith Foster, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English 2010 Acknowledgements I thank my family, friends, and advisors for providing tremendous support and encouragement throughout my Ph.D. journey. This achievement belongs to all of us. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………….…. 1 - 14 Chapter One …………………………………………………….15 - 49 Chapter Two ……………………………………………………50 - 80 Chapter Three………………………………………………….. 81 - 107 Chapter Four……………………………………………………108 -137 Works Cited…………………………………………………….138-149 Notes……………………………………………………………150-155 Green 1 Introduction “To Be Black and „At Home‟”i: Movement, Freedom, and Belonging in African American and African Canadian Literatures ―To Be Black and ‗At Home‘‖ emerges from a critical question that is pivotal to blacks‘ historical experiences in both the United States and Canada: What does it mean to belong to a nation, or call a nation home, but have other categories of belonging such as racial, class, and gender belongings inhibit opportunities for movement and freedom in that nation? In both the United States and Canada, black people have historically struggled with various levels and types of marginality because of their racial, class, and gender belongings and therefore have not been able to fully attain principal American and Canadian national ideals of freedom, equality, and justice, ideals to which both nations guarantee its citizens access. Blacks in both nations expect to attain benefits— such as opportunities for economic mobility— that respective national ideals promise. In many instances, however, these national ideals do not become tangible realities for black citizens who are treated as marginalized members of American and Canadian national communities because of their racial, class, and gender belongings. The discrepancies between national ideals and the realities that many blacks experience call into question the meanings of national belonging for people who are not treated as equal national community members and therefore cannot fully access opportunities for mobility and freedom. ii In both nations, literature is an important cultural vehicle to pinpoint and confront these discrepancies as well as some of the adverse consequences that discriminatory treatment has for mobility and freedom. The persistence of concerns with belonging, Green 2 movement, and freedom is continually evident in African American and African Canadian literary representations, and the novels I have selected for examination attest to the significance of these concerns.iii These texts— Ann Petry‘s The Street (1946), Austin Clarke‘s The Meeting Point (1967), Gloria Naylor‘s Linden Hills (1985), and Mairuth Sarsfield‘s No Crystal Stair (1997)—illustrate some of the varying and complex ways in which African American and African Canadian literatures consider intersections of movement, belonging, and freedom. These African American and African Canadian literary depictions engage some of the experiences of people who persistently encounter discrimination—an infringement on their rights as free citizens— because of their belongings to marginalized racial, gender, and class groups and show how movements such as national and transnational migration, educational attainment, and economic advancement can represent acts of resistance to the inequitable treatment of people who belong to marginalized groups. The selected literary works also demonstrate how these physical, intellectual, and economic movements are affirmations of blacks‘ right to access national ideals in the United States and Canada. Although I focus primarily on African American and African Canadian literatures, I also consider the implications of my comparative analysis for other diasporic literary studies of representations of themes of movement, belonging, and freedom because these themes impact diverse literatures and cultures throughout the African diaspora. For example, while racism or discriminatory treatment based on racial belonging has distinct manifestations in particular nations and cultures, a commonality African diaspora people share is their struggle with the inhibiting consequences of belonging to marginalized racial groups.iv Literary works, historical analyses, and other Green 3 diasporic texts are therefore important vehicles to illuminate how particular belongings affect opportunities for freedom and various types of mobility in diasporic places, including the United States and Canada. My comparative analysis of themes of belonging, movement, and freedom in African American and African Canadian literatures contributes to this aspect of diasporic study because my work is a partial examination of some of the ways these themes reflect the experiences and concerns of people throughout the African diaspora. African American and African Canadian scholars of literature and a range of other disciplines usefully pinpoint some of the ways that issues of belonging are central to black people‘s experiences in the United States and Canada. Like
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