Naturally Woman : The Search for Self in Black Canadian Women's Literature

by Beckford, Sharon Morgan

• ISBN13: 9781926708126
• ISBN10: 1926708121
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-01
• Publisher: Brunswick Books

Summary

Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. African American Studies. Black Canadian women must constantly incorporate changes to their identities to faces the challenges of living in a multicultural society. NATURALLY WOMAN examines the ways in which Black immigrant women must adapt to survive in a multicultural country such as Canada without losing their sense of self. The author examines the texts of five major modern/contemporary Canadian writers: Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Tessa McWatt, Claire Harris, and Makeda Silvera, through prismatic criticism and by applying and extending a number of feminist discourses concerning Black women writing: identity, literary representations of female sojourn in Canada (as simultaneously aboveground and underground), feminist archetypal/myth criticism, and the discourse of mother/daughter/grandmother/substitute mother relationships. The book argues that there is a universal central myth on which the writings of these marginalized women are based and shows how some of the challenges of multiculturalism can be overcome, and how multiculturalism can become a site for creativity and innovation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Myth Criticism: A Rationale	p. 7
Aesthetics of Now and Here: A Poesis of Nowhere: Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here	p. 29
Speaking the Unspeakable: From Silence to Voice in Marlene NourbeSe Philip's She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks	p. 65
Beginnings, Origins, and First Principles: Tessa McWatt's Out of My Skin	p. 114
ôLa Diablesse in Waitingö: Identity in Claire Harris's Drawing Down a Daughter	p. 174
The Heart Does Not Bend, It Breaks: Desire and Defeat in Makeda Silvera's The Heart Does Not Bend	p. 214
Epilogue	p. 260
Bibliography	p. 264
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