Middle passages and the healing place of history : migration and identity in Black women's literature / edited by Elizabeth Brown-Guillory.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Commonwealth literature (English)--Women authors--History and criticism.

Commonwealth literature (English).

Commonwealth literature (English)--Black authors--History and criticism.

Women and literature--English-speaking countries--History--20th century.

Women and literature.

Commonwealth literature (English)--Black authors.

Commonwealth literature (English)--Women authors.

English-speaking countries.

History.

Identity (Psychology) in literature.

Emigration and immigration in literature.

Women in literature.

Physical Description:

xiii, 201 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2006]

Summary:

Middle Passages and the Healing Place of History: Migration and Identity in Black Women's Literature brings together a series of essays addressing black women's fragmented identities and quests for wholeness. The individual essays concern culturally specific experiences of blacks in select African countries, England, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada. They examine identity struggles by establishing the Middle Passage as the first identity rupture and the subsequent break from cultural and historical moorings. In most cases, the authors themselves have migrated from their places of origin to new spaces that present challenges. Their narratives replicate the displacement engendered by their own experiences of living with the complexities of diasporic existence. Their female characters, many of whom participate in multiple border crossings, work to define themselves within a hostile environment. In nearly every essay, the female characters struggle against multiple yokes of oppression, giving voice to what it means to be black, female, poor, old, and alone. The subjects' migrations and journeys are analyzed as attempts to heal the "displacement," both physical and psychological, that results from dislocation and relocation from the homeland, imagined variously as Africa.

This volume reveals that black women across the globe share a common ground fraught with struggles, but the narratives bear out that these women are not easily divided and that they stand upon each other's shoulders dispensing healing balms. Black women's history and herstory commingle; the trauma that ensued when Africans were loaded onto ships in chains continues to haunt black women, and men, too, wherever they find themselves in this present moment of the diaspora.

Contents:

Conflicting identities in the women of Ama Ata Aidoo's drama and fiction / Violet Harrington Bryan

Coming to voice: navigating the interstices in plays by Winsome Pinnock / DeLinda Marzette

Migration, transformation, and identity formation in Buchi Emecheta's In the ditch and Kehinde / Romanus Muoneke

Gloria Naylor's north/south dichotomy and the reversal of the middle passage : juxtaposed migrations within Mama Day / Kathryn M. Paterson

Reconfiguring self: a matter of place in selected novels by Paule Marshall / Marie Foster Gnage

"What a history you have": ancestral memory, cultural history, migration patterns, and the quest for autonomy in the fiction of Jamaica Kincaid / Julia De Foor Jay

"Tee,", "Cyn-Cyn," "Cynthia," "Dou-dou": remembering and forgetting the "true-true name" in Merle Hodge's Crick crack, monkey / Joyce Zonana

Place and displacement in Djanet Sears's Harlem duet and The adventures of a black girl in search of god / Elizabeth Brown-Guillory

Recovering the past: transatlantic migration, hybrid identities, and healing in Tess Onwueme's The missing face / Juluette Bartlett-Pack.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-197) and index.

ISBN:

0814210384

9780814210383

0814291163

9780814291160

OCLC:

70258860