268 p., This study used a Black feminist critical framework to examine the conditions that influence the production of black women's fiction during the postwar era (1945-60). The novels of Ann Petry, Dorothy West and Paule Marshall were studied as artifacts that were shaped by the cultural and political climate of this crucial period in American history. A survey was also conducted of their associations with members and organizations in the American Left to determine what impact their social activism had on their lives and art. It was determined that these writers' political engagement played a significant role in the creation of transformative narratives about the power of black women to resist oppression in all of its forms. As a consequence of their contribution to a rich black feminist literary tradition, these postwar black women fiction writers serve as important foremothers to later generations of black women artists.
Analyses the feminist content of Afra-Hispanic literature written by Black Spanish-speaking women of the Caribbean and the Central and South America. Reconstruction of discursive tradition of Afra-Hispanic literature through archaeology; Presence of literate Afra-Hispanic writers during the slavery era; Prominence of Afra-Hispanic writers Nancy Morejon and Aida Cartagena Portalatin.
242 p., As a feminist approach which takes into consideration how gender collides with race, national origin, and class in the context of neo-colonial imperialisms, transnational feminist studies attempt to bridge the gap left by these theories that either look at gender or at race. This dissertation examines the work of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Philip, and Makeda Silvera in the light of these recent transnational feminist developments. By insisting on a fluid and multiply positioned self, these writers enact a transnational feminist identity that repudiates simplistic notions of gender oppression at the same time as it challenges masculinist notions of home.
494 p., Analyzes representational problems of black resistance and solidarity in the neoliberal age focusing on transnational black female protagonists in works by Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid, and Michelle Cliff. Considers how they are imagined to resist and assist U.S.-Caribbean relations of trade, labor, and development.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
212 p., This dissertation project aims to contribute to the current scholarship on transnational black feminisms. The project adds to the refining of nuanced theoretical approaches to specific experiences of black women. The author engages in close readings of four black women writers, Michelle Cliff, Joan Riley, Gayl Jones and Audre Lorde, as well as writings from two Black British collectives, the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Decent (OWAAD), and the Outwrite collective, distributers of Outwrite a Women's Newspaper. The readings result in several tropes within black women's discourse of this period, which include belonging and unbelonging, visitation and dismemberment, and living affectivity. The writings and conscious articulations are critical for locating transnational black feminist discourse as a distinct area of theoretical inquiry.
