The freedom to remember : narrative, slavery, and gender in contemporary Black women's fiction

cover image

Where to find it

Davis Library (8th floor)

Call Number
PS374.S58 M58 2002
Status
Available
Call Number
PS374.S58 M58 2002 c. 3
Status
Available

Stone Center Library

Call Number
PS374.S58 M58 2002 c. 2
Status
Available

Authors, etc.

Names:

Summary

The Freedom to Remember examines contemporary literary revisions of slavery in the United States by black women writers. The narratives at the center of this book include: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred , Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose , Toni Morrison's Beloved , J. California Cooper's Family , and Lorene Cary's The Price of a Child .

Recent studies have investigated these works only from the standpoint of victimization. Angelyn Mitchell changes the conceptualization of these narratives, focusing on the theme of freedom, not slavery, defining these works as "liberatory narratives." These works create a space to problematize the slavery/freedom dichotomy from which contemporary black women writers have the "safe" vantage point to reveal aspects of enslavement that their ancestors could not examine. The nineteenth-century female emancipatory narrative, by contrast, was written to aid the cause of abolition by revealing the unspeakable realitiesof slavery. Mitchell shows how the liberatory narrative functions to emancipate its readers from the legacies of slavery in American society: by facilitating a deeper discussion of the issues and by making them new through illumination and interrogation.

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