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.
220 p., Employs a black feminist diaspora literary lens to identify, define, trace, and speak to the African Diaspora as it functions in black women's diaspora fiction and informs our understanding of black women's diaspora identity. Considers three authors and novels by women of, in, and across the African Diaspora. The study centers on Sandra Jackson-Opoku's The River Where Blood Is Born as a primary site of analysis of diaspora formation and theorization, Dionne Brand's At the Full and Change of the Moon and Maryse Condé's Desirada as comparative textual and theoretical sites.
Considers the extent to which feminism and gender studies courses adequately explore diverse erotic desires in the Caribbean region. It offers a comparative investigation of questionnaire responses from Black female undergraduate students in England and Jamaica to assess the connections between their perceptions about sexual differences.
250 p., This dissertation has focused on the intertextual relationship between Tituba in I, Tituba...Black Witch of Salem and Veronica in Waiting for Happiness by Maryse Condé, primarily around different figures of otherness such as birth, race, sexuality, and space in which Tituba and Veronica are victims, according to their respective reference groups. Tituba is a child born out of wedlock because Abena, her mother, was raped by an English sailor on the Atlantic coast. This would rightfully translate into the hatred her mother has for her. Veronica was born into a family of two girls when her parents were in fact expecting a boy. Race and space are also lacking elements with the protagonists. This would explain their spatial instability depending on the course of the novels. Enslaved in different families, Tituba was imprisoned for witchcraft in Salem and was later hanged in her native Barbados due to lack of real space. Veronica on the other hand sought asylum in France where she returns after her disappointment of wanting ancestral roots in Africa.