Female Subjectivity In African American Women S Narratives Of Enslavement
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Female Subjectivity in African American Women's Narratives of Enslavement by L. Myles Pdf
Female Subjectivity in African American Women s Narratives of Enslavement is a new and innovative study of black women s transformation, which focuses on black women writers who support the notion of separate location for a changed female consciousness. This book offers the concept of the "Transient Woman" as a new paradigm and feminist vision for analyzing female subjectivity and consciousness.
The Freedom to Remember examines contemporary literary revisions of slavery in the United States by black women writers. The narratives at the center of this book include: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose, Toni Morrison's Beloved, J. California Cooper's Family, and Lorene Cary's The Price of a Child. Recent studies have investigated these works only from the standpoint of victimization. Angelyn Mitchell changes the conceptualization of these narratives, focusing on the theme of freedom, not slavery, defining these works as "liberatory narratives." These works create a space to problematize the slavery/freedom dichotomy from which contemporary black women writers have the "safe" vantage point to reveal aspects of enslavement that their ancestors could not examine. The nineteenth-century female emancipatory narrative, by contrast, was written to aid the cause of abolition by revealing the unspeakable realitiesof slavery. Mitchell shows how the liberatory narrative functions to emancipate its readers from the legacies of slavery in American society: by facilitating a deeper discussion of the issues and by making them new through illumination and interrogation.
Author : DoVeanna S. Fulton Minor Publisher : State University of New York Press Page : 182 pages File Size : 45,5 Mb Release : 2012-02-01 Category : Social Science ISBN : 9780791482315
In Speaking Power, DoVeanna S. Fulton explores and analyzes the use of oral traditions in African American women's autobiographical and fictional narratives of slavery. African American women have consistently employed oral traditions not only to relate the pain and degradation of slavery, but also to celebrate the subversions, struggles, and triumphs of Black experience. Fulton examines orality as a rhetorical strategy, its role in passing on family and personal history, and its ability to empower, subvert oppression, assert agency, and create representations for the past. In addition to taking an insightful look at obscure or little-studied slave narratives like Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon and the Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Fulton also brings a fresh perspective to more familiar works, such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, and highlights Black feminist orality in such works as Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Gayl Jones's Corregidora.
Writers as diverse as Carolivia Herron, Charles Johnson, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Derek Walcott have addressed the history of slavery in their literary works. In this groundbreaking new book, Arlene R. Keizer contends that these writers theorize the nature and formation of the black subject and engage established theories of subjectivity in their fiction and drama by using slave characters and the condition of slavery as focal points. In this book, Keizer examines theories derived from fictional works in light of more established theories of subject formation, such as psychoanalysis, Althusserian interpellation, performance theory, and theories about the formation of postmodern subjects under late capitalism. Black Subjects shows how African American and Caribbean writers' theories of identity formation, which arise from the varieties of black experience re-imagined in fiction, force a reconsideration of the conceptual bases of established theories of subjectivity. The striking connections Keizer draws between these two bodies of theory contribute significantly to African American and Caribbean Studies, literary theory, and critical race and ethnic studies.
The moving testimonies of five African-American women comprise this unflinching account of slavery in the pre-Civil War American South. Covering a wide range of narrative styles, the voices provide authentic recollections of hardship, frustration, and hope — from Mary Prince's groundbreaking account of a lone woman's tribulations and courage, the spiritual awakening of "Old Elizabeth," and Mattie Jackson's record of personal achievements, to the memoirs of Kate Drumgoold and Annie L. Burton. A compelling, authentic portrayal of women held as slaves in the antebellum South, these remarkable stories of courage and perseverance will be required reading for students of literature, history, and African-American studies.
Three contemporary novels of slavery - Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966), Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1986) and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) - are the central focus of Liberating Narratives. In significantly different ways that reflect their individual and socio-political contexts of origin, these three novels can all be read as critiques of historical representation and as alternative spaces for remembrance - 'sites of memory' - that attempt to shift the conceptual ground on which our knowledge of the past is based.
Black Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative by Elizabeth A. Beaulieu Pdf
The neo-slave narrative is an important development in American literary history and has serious revisionist intentions at its foundation. This book examines how contemporary African American women writers have shaped the genre. These authors have written neo-slave narratives to reinscribe history from the perspective of the African American woman, most specifically the nineteenth century enslaved mother. The writers considered in this study—Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, J. California Cooper, Gayl Jones, and Octavia Butler—explore American slavery through the lens of gender, both to interrogate the myth that enslaved women, denied the privilege of having a gender identity by the institution of slavery, were in fact genderless, and to celebrate the acts of resistance which enabled enslaved women to mother in the fullest sense of the term. The volume begins with an overview of historical representations of slavery in America, from the slave narrative itself to the revisionist scholarship of the 1960s. The book then examines several individual neo-slave narratives, such as Margaret Walker's Jubilee (1966), Williams' Dessa Rose (1986), Morrison's Beloved (1987), Cooper's Family (1991), Jones' Corregidora (1975), and Butler's Kindred (1979). What the women in these novels have in common is the fact that they mother; what the writers have in common is a tendency to utilize subversive strategies such as reversal, blurring, and the creation of myth to dramatize gender identity and to highlight the varied nature of motherhood as enslaved women experienced it. The final chapter evaluates the influence of the neo-slave narrative on American literature in general and on popular perceptions and misperceptions of African American women.
Author : William L. Andrews Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA Page : 382 pages File Size : 47,7 Mb Release : 1988 Category : American literature ISBN : 0195052625
Six Women's Slave Narratives by William L. Andrews Pdf
Six narrations by slave women about their lives during and after their years in bondage, honoring the nobility and strength of African-American women of that era.
In Mastering Slavery, Fleischner draws upon a range of disciplines, including psychoanalysis, African-American studies, literary theory, social history, and gender studies, to analyze how the slave narratives--in their engagement with one another and with white women's antislavery fiction--yield a far more amplified and complicated notion of familial dynamics and identity than they have generally been thought to reveal. Her study exposes the impact of the entangled relations among master, mistress, slave adults and slave children on the sense of identity of individual slave narrators. She explores the ways in which our of the social, psychological, biological--and literary--crossings and disruptions slavery engendered, these autobiographers created mixed, dynamic narrative selves.
Feminism in Slave Narratives by Franziska Scholz Pdf
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,7, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: African American Literature, language: English, abstract: The content of this paper deals with the experiences of American slaves out of a male and a female perspective to outline the relevance of feminism in anti-slavery literature. The first chapter gives an insight into the characteristics of slave narratives such as style, structure, themes and aims. Slave narratives are a product of abolitionism, but the aim of this paper is to show feministic influences as well, as the second chapter illustrates. By comparing the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, written by himself with Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl I want to show that the motifs for escape out of slavery are connected to very different factors for a slave woman compared to those of a slave man. Both Douglass and Jacobs suffer from the prevailing system of slavery, but Jacobs’ female point-of-view adds the suffrage from patriarchy as well. Finally I am going to follow the question why Douglass’ narrative gained more success in the 19th century than Jacobs’ narrative, although both stories deal with antislavery, oppression and the struggle for freedom.
New Criticism and Pedagogical Directions for Contemporary Black Women Writers by LaToya Jefferson-James Pdf
New Criticism and Pedagogical Directions for Contemporary Black Women Writers is a collection of critical and pedagogical essays that shed new light on the creative depths of Black women writers. On the one hand, some Black women writers have been heavily anthologized, they have more often than not been restricted by critical metanarratives. Some of their works have been lionized while others remain neglected. On the other hand, some Black women writers have been ignored and understudied. This collection corrects the gaps in our critical thinking about Black women writers by introducing them to a new generation of undergraduate and graduate students, and by presenting pedagogical essays to our colleagues currently working in the field.
Gender specific forms of oppression and resistance in Harriet Jacobs ́s "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Janina Gaiser Pdf
Academic Paper from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1.0, University of Constance, language: English, abstract: “You have seen a man made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” (Douglass, Jacobs, 2004) The experiences of Frederick Douglass, one of the former slaves who escaped the horrors of slavery, became one of the most widely read slave narratives and the most influential African- American text of the antebellum era. Authors like Douglass wanted not only to expose the inhumanity of the slave system, but they also gave incontestable evidence to the humanity of the African American. The question that arises is, how representative Douglass ́s narrative is – does he speak of “man” as a representative for people in general, or is he specifically speaking for the male slave? For the last years scholars have begun to pay more attention to issues of gender in their study of slavery and claim that female slaves faced additional burdens and even more challenges than some of the male slaves. Based on the first female slave narrative, Harriet Jacobs ́s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this paper will investigate how gender influences the way in which bondage can be experienced differently: what specific forms of oppression do women face in slavery, or what forms of oppression do they encounter to a larger extent than men? Claiming that this gender specific oppression results in gender specific forms of resistance, I will furthermore focus on the ways of how female slaves made a stand against this oppression. Again, Jacobs ́s narrative will be the basis for this investigation. Incidents is the first-person account of Jacobs ́s pseudonymous narrator “Linda Brent” and presents an accurate, although selective, story of her life. This paper will not discuss the relationship between Jacobs and her narrator Brent, but will consider Brent ́s account as autobiographical for Jacobs. For over a century, the authenticity of Jacobs ́s experiences was questioned until Jean Fagan Yellin ́ s ground breaking work proved her authorship. The basis for the following investigation will be a brief introduction of the various ways of approaching Incidents. The second part of the paper will then consider two gender specific forms of oppression: patriarchal sexual oppression, and the deprival of identity by neglecting female slaves to live out the “virtues of womanhood”. With Incidents, Jacobs breaks taboos in order to present Brent ́s sexual history in slavery and to emphasize the power of self-determination, motherhood and family relationships as powerful weapons of resistance.
Sacred Femininity and the Politics of Affect in African American Women's Fiction by Vicent Cucarella Ramón Pdf
This book presents the way in which African American women writers (Hannah Crafts, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison) have followed the spiritual endeavor of black Christianity as created by early nineteenth-century spiritual narratives to construct a sacred reading of the black female self. The sacred femininity that puts the ethics and aesthetics of African American women at the center of a certain mode of (African) Americanness relies on a view of spirituality that joins women ontologically and validates affective modes of representation as an innovative means to obtain social and personal empowerment.
Black Women as Custodians of History by Paula Sanmartin Pdf
This book is an essential addition to the study of comparative black literature of the Americas; it will also fill the gap that exists on theoretical studies exploring black women's writing from the Spanish Caribbean. This book examines literary representations of the historic roots of black women's resistance in the United States and Cuba by studying the following texts by both African American and Afro-Cuban women from four different literary genres (autobiographical slave narrative, contemporary novel on slavery, testimonial narrative, and poetry): Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by the African American former slave Harriet Jacobs, Dessa Rose (1986) by the African American writer Sherley Ann Williams, Reyita, sencillamente: testimonio de una negra cubana nonagenarian [Simply Reyita. Testimonial Narrative of a Nonagenarian Black Cuban Woman] (1996), written/transcribed by the Afro-Cuban historian Daisy Rubiera Castillo from her interviews with her mother Maria de los Reyes Castillo Bueno, "Reyita," and a selection of poems from the contemporary Afro-Cuban poets Nancy Morejon and Georgina Herrera. The study argues that the writers participate in black women's self-inscription in the historical process by positioning themselves as subjects of their history and seizing discursive control of their (hi)stories. Although the texts form part of separate discourses, the book explores the commonalities of the rhetorical devices and narrative strategies employed by the authors as they disassemble racist and sexist stereotypes, (re)constructing black female subjectivity through an image of active resistance against oppression, one that authorizes unconventional definitions of womanhood and motherhood. The book shows that in the womens' revisions of national history, their writings also demonstrate the pervasive role of racial and gender categories in the creation of a discourse of national identity, while promoting a historiography constructed within flexible borders that need to be negotiated constantly. The study's engagement in crosscultural exploration constitutes a step further in opening connections with a comparative literary study that is theoretically engaging, in order to include Afro-Cuban women writers and Afro-Caribbean scholars into scholarly discussions in which African American women have already managed to participate with a series of critical texts. The book explores connections between methods and perspectives derived from Western theories and from Caribbean and Black studies, while recognizing the black women authors studied as critics and scholars. In this sense, the book includes some of the writers' own commentaries about their work, taken from interviews (many of them conducted by the author Paula Sanmartin herself), as well as critical essays and letters. Black Women as Custodians of History adds a new dimension to the body of existing criticism by challenging the ways assumptions have shaped how literature is read by black women writers. Paula Sanmartin's study is a vivid demonstration of the strengths of embarking on multidisciplinary study. This book will be useful to several disciplines and areas of study, such as African diaspora studies, African American studies, (Afro) Latin American and (Afro) Caribbean studies, women's studies, genre studies, and slavery studies.
