Making dead and barren: Black women writers on the Civil Rights Movement and the problem of the American dream

Philathia R Bolton, Purdue University

Abstract

My project examines death and barrenness images prevalent in literature produced by black women during the 1970s and 1980s, taking for study the novels Bluest Eye (1970), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Corregidora (1975), and Mama Day (1988). I argue that images in these narratives represent contemporary manifestations of social death that directly relate to what belief in the American dream, unrealized, frustrates. Secondly, I argue that these images symbolize the ways in which decisions made as inspired by or in pursuit of the American dream had a deadening effect on black communities, primarily experienced as a loss of social sensibility and vitality of relationships. Concomitant with this argument is one about the way in which social death masqueraded as apparent prosperity for those "living in the American dream" in the decades following the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the black middle class. Toni Morrison's character Macon Dead in The Song of Solomon inspires the title of my dissertation. I interpret his story as one about hope in a movement that would provide descendents of slaves a point of access for acquiring the American dream and participating more fully in a country where they, too, could find a "home in this rock" (Morrison, Song of Solomon 235). He functions as an important metaphor for a conversation about intergenerational considerations of the American dream's impact on the Civil Rights Movement.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Patton, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|Black studies|Caribbean literature|Womens studies|American literature

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