Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 Rewriting the Mother Figure in Selected Novels by Contemporary African American Women Andreia Thaxton-Simmons Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES REWRITING THE MOTHER FIGURE IN SELECTED NOVELS BY CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN By ANDREIA THAXTON-SIMMONS A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2012 Andreia Thaxton-Simmons defended this dissertation on June 26, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Maxine Montgomery Professor Directing Dissertation Leon Anderson University Representative Dennis Moore Committee Member David Johnson Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii This Dissertation is dedicated to my husband, my son and my daughter. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of those who believed in me and helped to make this project possible in the midst of all of the changes that occurred during my process. I would like to thank my dissertation committee for working with me and providing me with the necessary guidance I needed. Thank you to my committee chair, Dr. Maxine Montgomery for her invaluable insight and her scholarly aptitude to help me conceptualize my topic. Thank you to Dr. Dennis Moore, David Johnson and Leon Anderson for your support. I would like to thank “the village” who helped with childcare: Geraldine Thaxton, Betty Simmons ,Gloria and Edward Fuller, Lisa Pratt, Christine and Kirk MeDearis, Christina Joy Robinson, Jarred Thaxton and Gerrica Thaxton. I would like to thank my mother Sharon Thaxton and my father Allen Hampton for their support.I would like to thank Dorothy Randall for her encouragement and support. I would like to thank Regina Thaxton, Stephanie Hunt, Pamela Thaxton-Barney, Leslie Barney, Kimberly Ross-Brown, Kimberly Pickett, Errica Thaxton, Lisa Paige, Diedra Lattimore,Jeneen Surrency, Sheryl Davis, Anwar Diop and Rachael Scott for being there. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: BETWEEN SURVIVAL AND FREEDOM--CONTRADICTION IN TONI MORRISON’S SULA ..................................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER TWO: EVERYTHING SAID IN THE BEGINNING -- THE BLUES IN GAYL JONES’ CORREGIDORA ............................................................................................. 33 CHAPTER THREE: SHUG’S POWER-- LIBERATION IN ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE ........................................................................................................................ 49 CHAPTER FOUR: BETWEEN AFRICANITY AND CHRISTIANITY--SPIRITUALITY IN GLORIA NAYLOR’S BAILEY’S CAFÉ ........................................................................... 63 CHAPTER FIVE: THE CHANGE -- REVISING MOTHERHOOD IN TINA MCELROY ANSA’S UGLY WAYS ................................................................................................... 75 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................ 87 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................................ 95 v ABSTRACT In this project, I theorize the implications of maternal loss in novels by contemporary African American female novelists. Maternal loss in this project is used to describe a separation of mother and child, specifically daughter, due to a disconnection in communication, death or dislocation. I argue that maternal loss symbolizes loss figuratively and literally. It symbolizes the loss of a distant African past, the loss of freedom, a loss of historical records and a literal/literary loss of black mothers. I note that the experience of maternal loss in the novels causes protagonists to search for Mother. The character must seek a connection with an enabling, maternal figure. Black motherhood has historically been laden with numerous challenges. Discussed by black feminist scholars such as bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins and Angela Davis, these challenges include mothers being disconnected from their children during and after the slave trade, poverty, various forms of abuse and efforts to overcome negative images set forth by dominant society. Contemporary African American female authors examine these challenges in the context of maternal loss, re-memory and third space. They look at the past to see how it impacts the present. However, they also face challenges in writing the maternal stories of the past. The primary challenge they face is trying to write in a void. They attempt to write/rewrite a history that has limited written records and the records that do exist are often thwarted or told from a biased point of view. Thus, black motherhood becomes a site for re-memory. This project examines the use of maternal loss, re-memory and third space to reconstruct black motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Sula, Gayl Jones’ Corregidora, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Café, and Tina McElroy Ansa’s Ugly Ways. It focuses on the use of history and its merge with an idealized space for maternal figures. The maternal figures contemporary black female novelists reconstruct can be linked with a distant African past and vestiges of the rural south. Yet, they are empowered and positioned to reject the historical mandates that have been placed upon them by patriarchal society and male dominance. Through the use of vi maternal loss, re-memory and third space, contemporary black female novelists create maternal figures that are able to mother on their own terms and in their own way. vii INTRODUCTION i am accused of tending to the past as if i made it, as if i sculpted it with my own hands. i did not. this past was waiting for me when i came, a monstrous unnamed baby, and i with my mother's itch took it to breast and named it History. she is more human now, learning languages everyday, remembering faces, names and dates. when she is strong enough to travel on her own, beware, she will. Lucille Clifton From the Motherland of Africa through the Middle Passage all the way to the American plantation and well into the city, the institution of slavery posed many obstacles for Black mothers. Black mothers were not allowed to be involved in the economic, social or political discourses that dictated their lives. They experienced rape, ridicule, hard labor, poor treatment, and, most disheartening, separation from their children. Throughout the course of history in America, the slave past has hovered over Black motherhood. Even when slavery ended, racial and gender discrimination presented more social, economic and political threats to maternal relationships. 1 For years, the impact that slavery had on Blacks went unaddressed. Ashraf A. Rushdy in Remembering Generations argues that scholars have yet to truly understand the full effects of slavery and there has been no true commitment to even try. He states, “Slavery, in American intellectual discourse, is not only or merely a metaphor, a sin, a cancer, a crime, or a shame, although it is also all of these things” (Rushdy 2). There is a need then to examine maternal loss as it relates to slavery and black motherhood. Undeterred by the pain of slavery, early Black female writers lifted their voices in resistance. Many early written works of African American women were autobiographies and slave narratives. Early Black female writers, such as Lucy Terry, Phyllis Wheatley and Jarena Lee, wrote about their experiences which documented their inhumane treatment as slaves. Narratives also became a popular means for free Blacks, including Mary Prince, Frances Harper, and Sojourner Truth, to fight against the institution of slavery in the South. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Harriet Jacobs wrote as a former slave about the sexual, physical and mental abuse slave women withstood. She had to work like a horse, breed like an animal, serve as a concubine, and still take care of her children as well as her master’s children and other children. Though many of these slave narratives were not uncovered until the twentieth century, this literature is important because it indicates that, by telling stories, Black women played a significant role in uncovering the perils of slavery. The female slave’s experience became investigative ground for Black female novelists, and, echoing Jacobs’ experiences, motherhood emerged as a defining characteristic of these novelists’ art. In the fifties and sixties, Gwendolyn Brooks and Paula Marshall, for example, defied the stereotypical slave images of the black mother as the pervasive mammy figure. In white southern literature, the mammy figure was loyal to her white God, her white domestic employers, and their children. Mammy sacrificed for everyone except herself. Richard