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Creative Books Black Feminist Fiction A March Towards Liberation by Harihar Kulkarni
The present study analyzes Black feminist fiction from Harriet Wilson to Paule Marshall in the light of the dominant motif of spiral movement from colonial innocence to awakening with its attendant effects on the Black feminine self. The study explains how the self in the "suspended" phase of early period remained fraught with"contradictory instincts" and in a state of"numb and bleeding madness" from which there was no release. Rendered almost a zombie in the first phase,the self in the second period was further socialized out of existence and myustified through the malignant ideology. The imprints of the truly liberated self could be witnessed only in the third cycle of Black women's novelistic tradition hoisted by paule marshall in the sixties,where the ebony phoenixes articulated clearly the joyful song of the authentic self,announcing at last their coming of age,transmutation,and freedom at the ontological level. There has beenno study,either in India or abroad,that has established such a perspective.About Author :Dr. Harihar Kulkarni,presently Reader in English at People's College, SRT Marathwada University Nanded,has been a Fulbright fellow at Stanford University, California and the University of Virginia,charlottesville, USA. He has published widely in scholarly research journals such as Callaloo, IJAS,IFR. He has also presented papers at the International MLA Conferences at San Francisco and New York. He has authored the book Voices of Black Feminism. His forthcoming titles are Race,Gender,and Identity and A Student's Handbook of Major Literary Theories Today. Currently he is engaged in a post-doctoral study on "Feminist Practices in Black African Diaspora and Post-structuralist Theories."Contents :PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionFrom Paradiso to Hell Black Women's Rites of PassageThe Multilated Self Black Women in SlaveryThe Jaded Self Black Women's Double JeopardyThe Mystified Self Myths,Images,and StereotypesTowards Redeeming the Self The Cycle of Black Women's FictionThe Liminal Self The Transitionary TextsThe Liberated Self The voices of Paule MarshallSumming UpBibliographyIndex