COLORISM IN TONI MORRISONS GOD HELP THE CHILD

The present paper has been specifically designed to scrutinize the aspect of colorism in Toni Morrisons well acclaimed novel God Help the Child. African American literature is an academic body of writing produced by African descendants residing in America. The literary canon of African- American literature emerged in late part of 18th century in oral forms like sermon, gospel, music, jazz, blues and spirituals. African American writers have deliberately expressed their painful agony, racial segregation, social injustice and ill treatment which they tolerated in white American society. Toni Morrison was a prolific female novelist of African-American literary writing. Morrisons eleventh novel God Help the Child prominently deals with colorism, racism and child abuse. Conceptually, the term Colorism was coined by Alice Walker to address the superiority of lighter or white skin over the dark. Colorism has its genetic roots in racism because without racism the standardization of color conflict would not be exist. The novel unfolds the story of Bride, also known as Lula Ann who is born with dark black color. She receives ill treatment by her own parents and gets negative rejection because of having black skin. Brides dark color ruins her golden childhood period. Louis Bridewell rejects Bride from accepting as his baby. Similarly, Sweetness breeds Bride with harsh treatment and cruelty. The research study will primarily focus on to address the color conflict faced by child protagonist Lula Ann.

RACISM TOWARDS AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY AS REFLECTED IN MAYA ANGELOU’S I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS: BLACK AESTHETIC CRITICISM

The study of the African American community always circulates among the issues of race, racism, discrimination, slavery, and oppression. All these issues become the grand themes of African American literature. These literary works could be studied and covered under the scope of Black Aesthetic criticism. One of the prominent works of African American literature is an autobiography of Maya Angelou entitled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). This autobiography portrays Angelou’s childhood experiences which brings up the issues of race, racism, and oppression. This paper aims to analyze the kinds of racism experienced by the African American community and their struggle against it as depicted in the book. To provide a thorough discussion of the matter, critical race theory was employed as the method of analysis. The result is drawn based on the basic tenets of critical race theory proposed by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2001); everyday racism, interest convergence, the social construction of race, differential realization, intersectionality, and voice of Color. The findings show the struggle of African American community against racism which are expressed through the act of ignorance, promoting intelligence, communal efforts, resistance, promoting social movement, and stepping forward to voice their experience through African American literature.

Music of Survival: A Search for Identity in the Works of Richard Wright

The complexly changing nature of American life and the vigorous versatility and all-encompassing spread of the written record are the marks of American literature. Social forces always make their imprint on literature. Especially in America where the democratic processes bring the people into immediate familiarity with and sensitive response to cultural forces, the literature has responded quickly to such pressures. African American literature consists of the literary work by the writers of Afro-origin settled in USA. The category“ slave narratives” were writings by people who had experienced slavery. It described their journeys to independence and their survival struggles. The concepts explored and issues raised were racism, slavery, and social equality.

the brownies’ book: du bois e a construção de uma referência literária para identidade negra infanto-juvenil

In the period from January 1920 to December 1921 a cooperation between Jessie Fauset, Augustus Dill and W.E.B. Du Bois resulted in the publication of a periodical called “The Brownies’ Book” (TBB) the first publication for North American black, and not white (colored people) children and young people. The creation of “The Brownies' Book” (TBB) was a pioneering event in African American literature in general and, more specifically, in the field of African American children's literature, as it was the first periodical composed and published by African Americans for black children who, until then, searched in vain for material that included a perspective on their experience and history. This article argues that the TBBs were one of the harbingers of the movement called the Harlem Renaissance, constituting a children's literary materialization of the path towards the emergence of what the philosopher Alain Locke called the New Negro. What was being formulated was both the deconstruction of stereotypes associated with blacks and the active projection/creation of a positive identification with their local and ancestral community. This paper seeks to identify the post-WWI discursive strategies and practices of de-racialization proposed for “the children of the sun”, as W.E.B. Du Bois called them, in order to stop seeing themselves “through the eyes of others” (Du Bois, 1903).