The Tripartite Plight of African-American Women as Reflected in the Novels of Hurston and Walker
1989; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/002193478902000206
ISSN1552-4566
Autores Tópico(s)Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
ResumoThe history of the Africana woman reveals her peculiar predicament within the dominant culture as victim of a tripartite form of oppression-racism, classism, and sexism, respectively. Since American slavery, she and the Africana man have experienced much brutality; however, her womanhood has placed her in an even more vulnerable position. Whether an African-American writer chooses to emphasize oppression based on race, class and/or sex, invariably the victimization of the Africana woman surfaces. For example, Frederick Douglass (1968: 60) notes in My Bondage and My Freedom that the woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her master. Furthermore, Blassingame (1979: 155) asserts in The Slave Community that frequently they [the slave masters] purchased comely black women for their concubines. Hence, while racism is their major focus, sexism and classism also are key issues in the African-American experience. As institutionalized racism has been a much debated subject, the present emphasis on class and female subjugation for the Africana woman then becomes a revived or fresh case of study for today's critic, particularly with women writers. My sense is that, relative to the times, this present emphasis merits serious consideration since racism continues to be in the forefront of African-American life. The intent of this literary analysis is to show how two twentiethcentury African-American women writers, Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker, depict the three-dimensional peculiarity of the Afric-
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